
Kicked Off Facebook, and Wondering Why - todayiamme
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/20/your-money/kicked-off-facebook-and-wondering-why.html
======
themodelplumber
Glad I went back and read the end of the article. For anyone else who is about
to give up and let themselves believe Facebook was unfairly moralizing in this
case:

> For Mr. Letwin, that can’t come soon enough. A month after his account was
> disabled, he received an email apologizing, saying it had all been a mistake
> on Facebook’s part.

> A Facebook spokesman said a report was filed against Mr. Letwin for using a
> fake name, which he had not done, and a reviewer looking at his account then
> mistakenly thought it violated Facebook’s standards regarding promotion of
> violence and terrorism. But the process took far longer than it should have,
> he acknowledged, saying that typically, an appeal should be responded to
> within a few days.

~~~
infinitone
Probably some zionists didn't like his group and probably mass reported his
account. They do have a dedicated group for that kinda stuff.

~~~
Someone1234
There seems to be well organised groups out to promote the Israeli viewpoint
on any social media site which discusses it.

Take Reddit for example, every time the topic comes up it gets absolutely
inundated with "people" trying to browbeat any non-pro point of view into
submission (through a combination of downvoting and just outright argument
from multiple puppets).

While there are definitely real people who feel that strongly about the topic
and have similar views, all you have to do is start looking at the account
histories of others to feel like there is a lot of sockpuppeting going on.

I'd love for the site admins on social media sites to look into this to see if
there is any "unusual activity" going on, particularly Reddit.

~~~
Estragon
[http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/14/israel-s...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/14/israel-
students-social-media/2651715/)

------
kiallmacinnes
_I was shut out of Facebook for 24 hours and felt like I had a limb chopped
off._

I honestly, truly, just don't understand this. Really, I don't. How can anyone
allow themselves to become so utterly dependent on a single company like this?
This reads like a drug addict describing going cold turkey.

~~~
w1ntermute
Especially someone who's 58 y/o (according to his Wikipedia profile). Did he
just forget that he was living just fine for nearly half a century before
Facebook was even created?

~~~
Nickoladze
That quote was from another person.

 _“We don’t realize how ingrained Facebook is in our everyday lives,” a drag
queen named Heklina told KNTV in San Jose, Calif. “I was shut out of Facebook
for 24 hours and felt like I had a limb chopped off.”_

------
tych0
A friend of mine a month or two a go began posting "throw-up Thursday"
pictures (a play on #tbt, i.e. throwback Thursday). He posted pictures of
people who were drunk and had thrown up on themselves. They were pretty gross,
as intended.

Someone reported him, and Facebook removed all of the posts and comments
referencing those posts. He began posting pictures again in protest, and they
threatened to ban him if he didn't stop, so he did.

I think it is unfortunate that Facebook feels the need to police content like
this (especially when the content is relatively in-offensive, like some
pictures of barf). There is also a block mechanism, so you can block stuff
from people you don't want to see (or, you could, you know, un-friend them!).
I can (potentially) see an argument being made for censoring some kinds of
content, but I was completely amazed that Facebook cared about something like
throw-up Thursday.

~~~
DanBC
I find it weird that Facebook is so clueless about this kind of stuff.

Women breast feeding children? Banned, for ages, until enough kerfuffle tha FB
changed their mind.

Beheading videos? Fine, no problem, go on. Until there was enough kerfuffle
for FB to make it easier to block those videos.

------
junto
I'm glad I've deleted my Facebook account. I really don't miss it one tiny
little bit.

It's like looking back at a relationship with a really clingy partner and
thinking to yourself 'wtf was I doing with her? Why did it take me so long to
realise that she was just using me?"

Yep folks. Facebook is that girl or guy you need to dump to realise how
screwed up they are.

------
yason
My Facebook account was suspended out of the blue, "due to recent changes in
my profile" where there weren't any. I don't use Facebook _that_ much but I
mostly felt liberated. "I thought, hey, they did it for me. I didn't have to
get frustrated and shut my account myself. That's it then."

I did miss the chance to keep in touch with certain groups of people but OTOH
Facebook already does a lot to make their platform unusable for simply
following your friends and groups, such as not necessarily showing what your
friends and groups actually post.

They did re-enable my account later. Still have no idea why it was suspended
in the first place, even if me and Facebook exchanged a handful of emails
about it.

------
bowlofpetunias
I don't understand why intelligent people that are capable of independent,
critical thought don't stay the fuck away from a platform that enforces a
narrow set of cultural, political and religious values that aren't theirs.

 _" My profile didn’t break any rules"_ _" They’re cut off to access to their
communities"_

It is not your fucking profile. They are not your fucking communities. It has
a Facebook logo on top of it, you are publishing for Facebook on behalf of
Facebook so that Facebook can profit from it. You are working for Facebook and
paying for the privilege with your privacy. It's Facebook's profile about you,
and Facebook decides what happens to it.

It all belongs to Facebook because you gave it to them. Just stop fucking
doing it.

I'm all in favor of tight government regulation when it comes to consumer
protection, privacy and corporations abusing their power, but this kind of
idiotic whining about what people do to themselves completely voluntarily just
pisses me off.

People deserve to protected against the insidious way in which Facebook c.s.
violate people's privacy rights. I understand that people have no idea how and
how much info Facebook collects about them, and how much harm that can do.

But if your communication and social life depend on Facebook you're just an
idiot who deserves to be made fun of rather than taken seriously and getting
portrayed as a victim by the NYT. Being lazy and stupid doesn't make you a
victim, no matter how idiotic Facebook's rules are.

------
pasbesoin
TL;DR: Maintain records of out-of-band means of contact.

My friends on FB are "real" friends.

A few years ago, one of FB's mandatory updates swapped out all user profile
email addresses with FB-domain email addresses. I had my address entry set to
show only to friends, and I considered it (perhaps uncommonly in comparison to
the common user) as a backup means of communication, including in the event of
losing control -- for whatever reason -- of my FB account.

When the FB update swapped my non-FB address for a FB address, I took the time
to manually swap it back and to suggest to my friends that they do the same,
including a brief explanation of why.

If you are going to use FB and the like for significant relationships, make
sure you have an out-of-band backup means of contact for said.

P.S. This also presupposes, in the case of email addresses in FB profiles,
actually noting same in your own records BEFORE the disconnect occurs. I.e.
most of my friends also restrict visibility of those addresses to "friends
only".

------
llamataboot
I predict that the new vigorous enforcement of the "real name" policy will be
a disaster and it boggles the mind that facebook is doing it after G+ tried
and failed.

I estimate 20-25% of my 1000 "friends" are using modified versions of their
legal name, or other names entirely.

~~~
morganvachon
There are legitimate reasons to change one's public name, too. A victimized
spouse hiding from their abuser comes to mind. I am friends with a few indie
authors who write under a pen name, and that pen name is what they go by on
Facebook. One does it for day job security; she's an elementary school teacher
by day, supernatural erotic fiction author by night. She tries to keep her
working life and personal life completely separate. Thankfully Facebook hasn't
caught on to any of them doing this, or they would lose their connection with
readers and friends alike.

