Facebook apparently has a grudge against me XD

[Moonchild]

Just thought I'd share this tidbit with y'all.

As you may be aware, Facebook doesn't really let you check Facebook pages past 1 or 2 posts without an account. Since I had to look up some company information of a local business where I've moved to and they have that on Facebook, I created an account. Brand new account, using a long-standing but not previously used on Facebook e-mail address. Never bothered to make a post, because I just wanted to use it to know the company info.
Logged back in the other day, and shortly after, I received a notification in my e-mail:

{name}, you have 180 days to take action.

Hi {name},

Your Facebook account has been suspended. This is because your account, or activity on it, doesn't follow our Community Standards on account integrity.

If you think we suspended your account by mistake, you have 180 days to appeal our decision. If you miss this deadline your account will be permanently disabled.


{name}

[[Appeal]]

You can learn more about why we suspend accounts by visiting the Community Standards.


Thanks,
The Facebook team

Initially I thought it was a phishing scam, but the URLs were legit and checked out. So yeah, they did actually suspend my brand new account for "account integrity" reasons.
Clicking the "appeal" button had me prove I was a real person through a selfie video. Sure, whatever. "Account integrity" made sense in that respect.

So, I wait a few hours and receive:

Your review was unsuccessful

Hi {name},

Your Facebook account has been permanently disabled.

You requested a review of this decision, but we still found that your account, or activity on it, didn’t follow our Community Standards. You can’t request another review.

Learn more about why we disable accounts by visiting the Community Standards.


{name}

Log into Facebook



Thanks,
The Facebook team

The "Community standards" goes on about the kind of content you're not allowed to post etc. which is obviously N/A because I didn't post anything (yet).
So, they permanently disabled my account without explanation, without there being any content in it, based on unknown parameters even after providing them my real face biometrics. Without possibility for further review.

Well, if Facebook really dislikes my face that much, I guess I'll leave it to Gen Z to be on. I'll just call the business the "old fashioned way" if I need info, next time.

[Night Wing]

At my home, in both MX Linux and Debian, if a person wants to check on their Facebook account on any of my five computers, they cannot. I have placed Facebook (and a few other sites) in my Hosts file so no browser can access Facebook (or the other sites).

[Mæstro]

Twenty years on, I still fail to grasp why Facebook exists, despite family members and a friend who use it. What does one even do there?

[moonbat]

What does one even do there?

It has replaced what used to be independent fora for different topics, from politics to hobbies and is the reason why the independent web has become a wasteland. All popular meaningful discussion is now on FB/Xitter, and if you're a small business then they and Google are your only options for reaching an audience.

[Lucio Chiappetti]

Twenty years on, I still fail to grasp why Facebook exists, despite family members and a friend who use it. What does one even do there?

I do share your opinion about FB and most of the so-called socials ... however a non-subscriber might unfortunately need to access it. Two real examples.

My municipality has a sort of botanic garden, where they occasionally organize guided visits. They used to have a web page, and have a FB page. Well, they ceaed updating the announcements on the web page, and update just the FB page.
A subsidiary of my municipality, born originally as an engineering company to project underground lines, has taken in charge other things, from council houses to the acqueduct. Last year (60th anniversary of the first underground line) they organized a series of conferences. I attended the first one in person, and decided to attend the other ones online. For some reasons they decided not to stream them themselves (very few do that), nor to use youtube (one can find things like seminars, ceremonies, even masses on yt, arranged not requiring a login), but to use a couple of socials. Luckily the permissions were arranged quite open.

[frostknight]

{name}

The "Community standards" goes on about the kind of content you're not allowed to post etc. which is obviously N/A because I didn't post anything (yet).
So, they permanently disabled my account without explanation, without there being any content in it, based on unknown parameters even after providing them my real face biometrics. Without possibility for further review.

I guess your data isn't valuable enough to them, they also want you to use a modern web browser too...

Talk about greedy

[Moonchild]

they also want you to use a modern web browser too...

I used edge to access it at the time, and brave on my phone to provide the selfie. So that's not it.

No, it just seems like my e-mail, name, location and biometric combination was enough to say "not welcome here".
No skin off of my back though, since I'm not at all invested in Facebook any longer, and they were kind enough to shut me out right away.

[frostknight]

No, it just seems like my e-mail, name, location and biometric combination was enough to say "not welcome here".
No skin off of my back though, since I'm not at all invested in Facebook any longer, and they were kind enough to shut me out right away.

That does make more sense, II have been able to use FB on palemoon in the past...

Its definitely better off to avoid them like the plague tho if you can.

[Moonchild]

I don't want to avoid them, because I'd like to have access to the info posted on Facebook by local businesses not found elsewhere. That was the whole point of making an account to begin with. Did you not understand my OP?

[frostknight]

I don't want to avoid them, because I'd like to have access to the info posted on Facebook by local businesses not found elsewhere. That was the whole point of making an account to begin with. Did you not understand my OP?

Fair enough, but it seems you have no choice for the time being.

It is what it is.

[Mæstro]

There appears to be a frontend for Facebook, analogous to Nitter for Twitter or Invidious for YouTube, called Phice. I did not know this existed until today, and even registers of frontends for various sites omit Facebook. I cannot find any live Phice instances online, as Xcancel is of Nitter. If one is available, it might suffice for accessing information which has stupidly been made exclusive to Facebook.

I used edge to access it at the time, and brave on my phone to provide the selfie.

Congratulations on having desktop access again, at least. I hope your cold has also got better. I am mildly surprised that you would use Edge at all, but then again, I felt just the same to hear about you attempting Facebook.

[Gemmaugr]

There appears to be a frontend for Facebook, analogous to Nitter for Twitter or Invidious for YouTube, called Phice. I did not know this existed until today, and even registers of frontends for various sites omit Facebook. I cannot find any live Phice instances online, as Xcancel is of Nitter. If one is available, it might suffice for accessing information which has stupidly been made exclusive to Facebook.

Nice. I only found two google android frontends, of which one has been abandoned: https://github.com/mendel5/alternative- ... e#facebook

[Moonchild]

Off-topic:

Congratulations on having desktop access again, at least.

Oh yeah, I got desktop access again shortly before Christmas. it's why I've been able to do some more coding work recently.

I hope your cold has also got better.

It was a cold. Those never last long XD
I'd be severely worried if a cold lasted a whole month and seek help in that case.

I am mildly surprised that you would use Edge at all, but then again, I felt just the same to hear about you attempting Facebook.

I've made no secret about Edge being my flavour of Chromium for the desktop when I need a fallback browser. When I make a point of using a fallback browser, it has to work and be one of the browsers mainstream supports or can be demanded to support; so I'd not be using a small-segment browser in that case.
As stated before: Facebook attempt was only to gain access to facebook-exclusive information online. Since that failed, I'm not bothering with trying further.

[Octopuss]

What domain was the email from? I used to use Sneakemail for years to avoid spam by means of their aliases (so when I started getting crap, I would simply register a new address), and about three years ago this (presumably) led to my Instagram account being permanently banned despite filling some annoying confirmation forms virtually every few days (this got progressively worse over time).

Btw why do I still use Facebook as someone asked? It's simple: most of my contacts are on messenger and I don't want to lose 15 years worth of chat history with my wife, for example. There are also a few groups I check from time to time that have no alternatives. But ever since Adblock stopped working on Facebook's wall long time ago, 90% of time spent on FB is in messenger.

[Moonchild]

What domain was the email from?

My personal domain which has a no-spam reputation of decades.

[Mæstro]

I have placed Facebook (and a few other sites) in my Hosts file so no browser can access Facebook (or the other sites).

Now that Manifest 3 has lain waste to Chromium, I think this, or comparable measures like DNS filtering, is the only choice left to block adverts in mainstream Blink browsers.

Btw why do I still use Facebook as someone asked? It's simple: most of my contacts are on messenger and I don't want to lose 15 years worth of chat history with my wife, for example.

I suffer a milder variation of this problem with Discord, but today happens to have marked two breakthroughs on that front: one technical, one social. For the one, I have at last been able to export my most recent batch of messages with that one friend using Discrub in Waterfox. For the other, I suggested today to my one friend who has always insisted on Discord that I would need to leave the platform if Discord announced concrete plans to implement LLM scraping, and he appeared approving for the first time ever. Might there be some way to export your Messenger logs and move elsewhere with your wife?

Off-topic:
Discrub works, which is more than I can say of Discord Chat Exporter with my current Linux setup (which, however, worked in 2021 in a Windows 7 VM). It is resource-intensive on my older (1400 MHz, 5 GB) computer, requiring six hours to export 36 000 messages (it can only cope with up to 40 000 at once in a known bug) and up to 1·3 GB of store for several hours of that, not counting six to eight hours spent getting familiar with the software’s behaviour in abortive attempts and remembering why technical problems drive me bonkers.

[Basilisk-Dev]

I needed an account to get in contact with a friend who had lost access to their phone number somehow. The exact same thing happened to me, all I did was set a profile photo, contact that friend and get their new contact info, and added a couple of people on the "People you may Know" section. I had the account for less than a day when that happened.

[Moonchild]

I needed an account to get in contact with a friend who had lost access to their phone number somehow. The exact same thing happened to me, all I did was set a profile photo, contact that friend and get their new contact info, and added a couple of people on the "People you may Know" section. I had the account for less than a day when that happened.

Ha! Good to know I'm not the only one, then.

[UCyborg]

These services are even more cancerous today than when they were new it seems, in more aspects than apparent when just glancing from the outside.

Honestly, it seems to me the whole society is rotten to the core.

[frostknight]

These services are even more cancerous today than when they were new it seems, in more aspects than apparent when just glancing from the outside.

Honestly, it seems to me the whole society is rotten to the core.

Off-topic:

Wouldn't say all, maybe 33% at most

Because more people are becoming fascists lately....

Or extremists in general