Facebook Fiasco
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| This is the message I now get if I try to log in to Facebook |
I wrote and sent this letter below to Meta..., I also emailed it to three of the email addresses listed on Google. I doubt if I will get any response from the Artificial Intelligence (AI) program that appears to be running Facebook. I hope that enough of my FB friends realize that I did not "unfriend" them and did not just willingly drop out of sight with no explanation. If anyone noticed and egregious violation of "Community Standards" or "account integrity" on my account before it was disabled I would appreciate it if you would inform me as to what it was..., because FB refuses to provide me with any details.
Meta Support:
It started on 4/15/25 at 07:56 with an email from Facebook saying:
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Scott R., you have 180 days to take action.
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Hi Scott R.,
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.
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Two minutes later at 07:58 I got an email from Meta for Business saying:
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Hi Scott R.,
We've noticed some unusual activity on your Facebook account and have restricted its access to advertising. Any ads connected to your account are currently disabled.
To learn more, please review our Advertising policies affecting business assets.
If you believe your account was incorrectly restricted, click the Fix issue button below to verify your account.
You have until October 12, 2025 to fix the issue before the account is permanently disabled.
We used technology to detect this violation and carry out this decision. Further violations of our Advertising Standards may result in your account being disabled or restricted.
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Well…, I have never done any advertising on my Facebook page so I kind of ignored the second email but did check out the link to “account integrity” and tried to “appeal” the information on the first email. The website for account integrity provided this information:
https://transparency.meta.com/policies/community-standards/account-integrity/
Policy Rationale
In order to maintain a safe environment and empower free expression, we restrict or remove accounts that are harmful to the community. We have built a combination of automated and manual systems to restrict and remove accounts that are used to egregiously or persistently violate our policies across any of our products.
Because account removal is a serious action, whenever possible, we aim to give our community opportunities to learn our rules and follow our Community Standards. For example, a notification is issued each time we remove content, and in most cases we also provide people with information about the nature of the violation and any restrictions that are applied. Our enforcement actions are designed to be proportional to the severity of the violation, the history of violations on the account, and the risk or harm posed to the community. Continued violations, despite repeated warnings and restrictions, or violations that pose severe safety risks will lead to an account being disabled.
I was pretty sure that I had posted nothing that was a safety or security risk, but there was no “notification issued to provide me with information about the nature of the violation” other than the very broadly based “Community Standards” or “account integrity”. The usual procedure is to take down the content of particular post and issue a warning and a “strike”…., and after five strikes you entire account can be suspended. I received no warning what so ever…, my account was suspended. I tried to appeal the decision but that link took me to a page that indicated that my account was suspended and I would have to do a “Video Selfie” to confirm my identity to go any further with the appeal. I didn’t think my lap dog computer had a camera to enable that…, but managed to get on a “chat” with a person/BOT and tried to explain the situation and the reason that I couldn’t do the video selfie and noted that my bank, or retirement account, or investment account or Social Security account was able to confirm my identity without a video selfie and questioned why Facebook need one? After going round and round with the person/BOT he/it said that he/it did not see any “suspicious activity” on my account and closed the chat and I have not been able to do any more chats. I assumed that the problem had been corrected…, but that was not the case…, when I tried to log in to Facebook…, I still got the page saying I would have to submit to the video selfie if I wanted to continue.
On Google I found an email address to “appeals@fb.com" and tried that…, twice with no response either time…, I also replied to the Facebook email with no response.
On 4/26/25 I got this from Facebook:
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Scott R., you only have 168 days left to take action
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Hi Scott R.,
We noticed that you didn't finish the steps to appeal our recent decision to suspend your account.
We want to help you get back on Facebook, so we give everyone 180 days to appeal. You only have 168 days left to complete this, before your account is permanently disabled.
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I replied to that email…,
“I have sent two emails to "appeals@fb.com" and have received no response.
I also did a chat explaining that I cannot do the selfie video and was told that my account had been reviewed and no suspicious activity was found..., but my account has not been restored.
I have no clue what the heck is going on over there ????
Scott R.”
Needless to say…, there was no response. So after waiting patiently for over a month I tried the video selfie thing. My computer actually has a FaceTime application that will enable me to do video calls with someone else who has a FaceTime account…, but I had never activated the app so I had my doubts that it would work for Facebook…, but it did work…, and after just a couple of hours I got this email from Meta Support:
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Your review was unsuccessful
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Hi Scott R.,
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.
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I replied:
“I have never been informed of the specific activity that resulted in my suspension.
The "failure to follow Community Standards" covers a very wide range of possible violations.
I do not believe that I have violated any of those "Standards".
It is possible that a hacker has entered some such violations unbeknownst to me, but I have not seen any such activity on my page.
I have reviewed the Oversite Board Review process and would appreciate the opportunity to request such a review but I was not offered a "reference number" to do so.
I never received any "warning" or "five strikes" that are supposed to be utilized prior to disabling an account.
Please let me know how to resolve these issues.
Thanks,
SRS”
At this point I am not sure what to do? I seems obvious to me that Artificial Intelligence (AI)has been used to initiate all the actions taken so far by Facebook. The posted operational policies have not been followed by informing me of the specific content that has been such an egregious act of “posing severe safety risks”. If a responsible and logically able human had reviewed my account over the years it would be obvious that I am not the type of person who would issue such content and would see right off that I have not engaged in any “advertising” content.
It would also be obvious to a logical person that I must have been hacked by some sort of pervert who posted some kind of perverted content on my page.
I would like to believe that Facebook would be as conscientious about protecting me from such abuse as they appear to be about protecting their “community standards”…, but sadly that does not appear to be the case here.
Disabling my account for something that I did not do and not explaining what you think I did does not seem like a proper business model to follow. Please take a look at the issues…, and at the very least issue me a “reference number for an Oversite Board review.
I am a 73 year old man and lived for the first nearly 40 years of my life in a small northern Idaho town and graduated from high school there. The remaining 30 plus years of my life have been in western Washington. Facebook has been a wonderful way for me to reconnect with old friends and family who I had lost touch with for many years…, some of whom I had not seen or heard from since high school. Many thanks indeed for that Facebook. It nearly moves me to tears to think that I have forever lost touch with those old friends…, and the tears did roll when I recently read in the on line version of the old Idaho local paper that one of those old friends, classmate and teammate lost his middle aged son to suicide. I have no way to contact the old friend and offer my condolences now that my account has been permanently disabled for something that I have no clue about…, and reverently believe was none of my doing.
Please help me resolve this issues detailed in this letter…, as I have had no luck getting appropriate action by other means documented on your support pages.
I am mailing you this letter in addition to emailing support@fb.com, appeals@fb.com, and disabled@fb.com due to that fact that other emails have been unsuccessful so far.
Respectfully,
Scott R. Spence
scottr@olypen.com
(360) 374-9721
