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When Knowing Someone at Meta Is the Only Way to Break Out of "Content Jail"

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Re: When Knowing Someone at Meta Is the Only Way to Break Out of "Content Jail"

#81

Post by pogue »

United857 wrote: post #75
pogue wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have proof of this though? Otherwise, we're just speculating it's a likely possibility.

I am a Meta employee. Don't want to disclose any inside info or dox myself but there's been other articles written about this, e.g. https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/17/23464297/meta-allegedly-...

Gotcha. Don't suppose you could help me with my Instagram account? :)

If pogue972 on Instagram suddenly got a reset email or something, I definitely wouldn't ask any questions.

Re: When Knowing Someone at Meta Is the Only Way to Break Out of "Content Jail"

#82

Post by pndy »

diebeforei485 wrote: post #5

It's important to have your own website, so you can post updates there. Use Meta to let people know that there is an update on the site.

I'm not sure if that's still a thing but I remember period where companies were using their fb profiles and messenger to provide customer support. That gave me shivers back then.

Re: When Knowing Someone at Meta Is the Only Way to Break Out of "Content Jail"

#83

Post by pdonis »

dylan604 wrote: post #8
diebeforei485 wrote: post #5

It's important to have your own website, so you can post updates there. Use Meta to let people know that there is an update on the site.

Having your own site on someone else's corporate service is no less of a risk of being shut out of your account. Free speech is only as free as the service you are using thinks it is.

No, it's much less of a risk, because companies that sell domain hosting services have an actual financial relationship with you and have much better support infrastructure in place because you're a paying customer. The risk is not zero--no risk is ever zero--but compared to your risk of Facebook doing something stupid and unwarranted and you being unable to get it fixed, the risk with a domain hosting company is pretty small.

Re: When Knowing Someone at Meta Is the Only Way to Break Out of "Content Jail"

#84

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

annoyingcyclist wrote: post #41
linsomniac wrote: post #12

Google, especially Google Corp, is very much that way too. One of my users is currently getting a fair bit of spam because a spammer figured out that if they send a message with envelope sender @google.com, rcpt @gmail.com, google.com MX will accept it, then bounce it with NoSuchUser and gmail will accept it. I spent an hour yesterday looking for a way to contact Google about it, but couldn't find anything. Made hard…

I've been slowly migrating logins off of a @gmail.com email and onto an email at a domain that I own/control for this reason. It's tedious and feels a little like an overreaction (presumably the odds of this happening to individual users are pretty low). On the other hand, the thought of some faceless fraud algorithm deciding that I should no longer have access to the credentials I use to log in to my bank, investmen…

What mail provider are you using?

Edit: NVM. I see Fastmail when I reread the comment.

Re: When Knowing Someone at Meta Is the Only Way to Break Out of "Content Jail"

#85

Post by ryandrake »

j45 wrote: post #32
bigbadfeline wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's risk and then there's RISK. A corporate service in the form of a simple VPS is cheap and can be had from a 1000 providers anywhere in the world. Very simple to change providers too. Nothing like the quasi-monopoly of FB/X/YT.

VPS providers are many orders of magnitude simpler and smaller corporate services than social media companies. Remotely trying to correlate or compare them defies any reasonable semblance of comparability. You can mail your own server to a co-location service if you want to host the metal yourself. If you need to go a step further and not rely on one host, it's inexpensive enough to get multiple hosts.

And VPS providers are mostly interchangeable. If one of them goes crazy and starts using AI to randomly ban customers, just take all your toys over to the next one. At the end of the day it's just a commodity root shell.

Re: When Knowing Someone at Meta Is the Only Way to Break Out of "Content Jail"

#86

Post by pndy »

j45 wrote: post #34
electric_muse wrote: post #4

Content is one thing. But it gets me really concerned about these kind of appeal processes when it comes to more critical things like your identity or proof of personhood. It is not hard to imagine getting a black mark in some invisible proprietary profile that determines if you can access Uber Eats, LinkedIn, etc. and have no recourse to fix it or get another chance.

The online "sign in with X/Y/Z" services are a digital identity provider. We are citizens of private corporations that are social networks. There are not many laws there for recourse or communication.

OpenID was aiming to be a decentralized digital identity solution for everyone but then companies opted out for own solutions.

I'm seeing more and more sites pushing for signing with facebook/apple/google accounts and I'm afraid how the Internet may look like in a few years. It seems we're on path on total sanitization of online services, sites and content to the point where everything will be "safe", verified and authorized and so will be users.

Re: When Knowing Someone at Meta Is the Only Way to Break Out of "Content Jail"

#87

Post by j45 »

toast0 wrote: post #47
j45 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as? I'm not sure if there's a common way, largely practiced by many people where they don't own their own domain name that they can point anywhere?

It used to be common to let an outside agency run your website, and they may own the domain. It's probably still very common to manage your domain with your hosting company. If you get blacklisted by your hosting company, you may not be able to transfer your domain out.

If someone built you a house and retained the master keys to the house that's more on the buyer being lead through the process more ethically.

Re: When Knowing Someone at Meta Is the Only Way to Break Out of "Content Jail"

#88

Post by pja »

bsder wrote: post #60
annoyingcyclist wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been slowly migrating logins off of a @gmail.com email and onto an email at a domain that I own/control for this reason. It's tedious and feels a little like an overreaction (presumably the odds of this happening to individual users are pretty low). On the other hand, the thought of some faceless fraud algorithm deciding that I should no longer have access to the credentials I use to log in to my bank, investmen…

> I didn't want to actually host my own mail stack Is there a way to only host the receive portion? I'm happy to pay someone to handle all the idiocy around sending email and getting it through Google and Microsoft, but I'd really like to hold my emails myself.

> > I didn't want to actually host my own mail stack > > Is there a way to only host the receive portion? > > I'm happy to pay someone to handle all the idiocy around sending email and getting it through Google and Microsoft, but I'd really like to hold my emails myself.

Sure. Set your MX to your own SMTP server but pay a mail delivery service to send your emails & use their SMTP servers as your outgoing server. You'll have to setup SPF & DKIM appropriately of course.

It's not trivial to do this, but it should be possible.

Re: When Knowing Someone at Meta Is the Only Way to Break Out of "Content Jail"

#89

Post by jacobgkau »

linsomniac wrote: post #12

Google, especially Google Corp, is very much that way too. One of my users is currently getting a fair bit of spam because a spammer figured out that if they send a message with envelope sender @google.com, rcpt @gmail.com, google.com MX will accept it, then bounce it with NoSuchUser and gmail will accept it. I spent an hour yesterday looking for a way to contact Google about it, but couldn't find anything. Made hard…

I just got my first one of those @google.com bounces to my Gmail today.

Re: When Knowing Someone at Meta Is the Only Way to Break Out of "Content Jail"

#90

Post by jacobgkau »

pogue wrote: post #81
United857 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a Meta employee. Don't want to disclose any inside info or dox myself but there's been other articles written about this, e.g. https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/17/23464297/meta-allegedly-...

Gotcha. Don't suppose you could help me with my Instagram account? :) If pogue972 on Instagram suddenly got a reset email or something, I definitely wouldn't ask any questions.

To be fair, he just said it's a fireable offense-- presumably (and according to the article he linked) to use the tools for people you don't know at all, not just to take money for it. (It's probably easier for Meta to prove an employee used the recovery tool than to prove they received money for it.) I do hope you get your account back, though.
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