Don't make enemies on facebook, kids!

[HCHTech]

We have a small customer - basically a hobby business started when the owner retired from his main profession. I got a call last week about him being locked out of his business facebook account. He had a poor password, and apparently someone decided to target him. The first lockout occurred a couple of weeks ago and he reset it and thought he was done once he had access again - apparently not. He found some fraudulent charges from facebook using the card that was registered with his account - so had to deal with that. Bad guy changed the password again, and must have posted some offensive content because this time he got put in facebook jail and his account put under review. We did a scan of his system for malware and checked his email for malicious forwarding orders, changed the email password, etc. All clean as far as I could tell. I recommended he give facebook the information he had (apparent account compromise), request another password reset and dispute the lockout. Then just wait - either they would let him back in or they wouldn't - if not, he would have to abandon his page and start over - and this time use a better password & 2FA.

So he heard back on Saturday from the Facebook review - his account was flagged for posting content "against their child sexual exploitation protection standards". This time, there was no "click here to dispute these findings" link, so I think he's pretty much done. He called the state police - they visited him to take a report, but obviously there isn't anything they can do to help at this stage.

What a mess...

 

[Sky-Knight]

MFA all the things!

 

[timeshifter]

This time, there was no "click here to dispute these findings" link, so I think he's pretty much done.

That's a big problem with these large powerful tech companies. They are the gatekeepers for large important platforms and many times they won't reason with you.

I had a similar problem with Amazon in 2005. I wanted to be a seller on Amazon but they flat out denied me. There was maybe one appeal then the door was slammed in my face. I had been working for my brother's company a couple of years prior to that and his company had a soured relationship with Amazon. They thought that I was also responsible, even though I was just a lowly employee and no greater affiliation than that.

 

[frase]

Feck Fberk & all Social Media, it has basically killed the internet and society. Business that relied on Facebook made me laugh when it went pearshaped here in Australia.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Yeah, Youtube is another huge one... sink all that time into content creation and they can just "demonetize" you without any sort of formal review.

It's all private property, so I'm OK with them having the rule making power, they just need a government intelligent enough to force them to PUBLISH that method, and require it to maintain some sort of auditable process.

We require the government to have documentation trails on things that live at this scale for a reason, we're long past the time of requiring it for private entities that have essentially gained ownership of the entire market.

I view social media platforms very much like I do banks because of all this.

 

[phaZed]

Ditch Facebook and Social Media - Problem Solved.