

Ask HN: Randomly kicked off Facebook. Do they really review? - Be-The-Water

My girlfriend was recently kicked off of Facebook. The reason Facebook gave was that they had determined that her account was a fraudulent one, that is what she saw after logging in. She clicked on an appeal button and just wrote that she is who she says she is. A few days later, she received the following email.<p>&#62; Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2010 00:10:35 -0800
&#62; To: <i></i><i></i><i></i><i></i>@hotmail.com
&#62; From: info+inscin@support.facebook.com
&#62; Subject: Re: Disabled Account Appeal-ID Request
&#62; 
&#62; Hi,
&#62; 
&#62; Fake accounts are a violation of our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. Facebook requires users to provide their real first and last names. Impersonating anyone or anything is prohibited, as is maintaining multiple profiles on the site. Unfortunately, we will not be able to reactivate this account for any reason. This decision is final.
&#62; 
&#62; Thanks for your understanding,
&#62; 
&#62; The Facebook Team<p>Of course my response, not being a Facebook user was congratulations its not that Facebook does not want you its that real life wants you back :-). She of course would rather stay a user since she is a second grade teacher at a progressive school and had most of her superiors, friends, family and students as friends on her account. (Just to vouch for her I know they all could verify that she used her actual name, she definitely did not have another account or was interested in having one.)<p>I guess the remedy is to just use another email address, although I don't know if her name has been targeted now. But it made me wonder with 500 million users and 2000 employees, I am sure an algorithm determines fraudulent accounts and would they really review this stuff manually? My guess would be not. Wondering if anyone knows?
======
jeffmould
Apparently there was a bug in the FB code on the day their new mail product
was released.

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/17/facebook-
deactivati...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/17/facebook-deactivation-
bug_n_784871.html)

------
jdp23
Facebook don't appear to review automated deletions manually unless somebody
complains.

It's a tough situation. The "What you can do" section of
<http://www.talesfromthe.net/blog/?p=28> is a couple years old, but it
describes a few techniques that worked at the time. there are also some
discussions at <http://getsatisfaction.com/facebook> that might be useful.

------
kadavy
I have a friend who was recently banned for a couple of days. She said that "a
bug that randomly affected some female users" was to blame, so maybe that's
it. The best advice I can give is to try support@facebook.com

Also, this video might make you feel better. You are not alone:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=110aaTzdlno>

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mcav
I think your hunch is correct: Create a new e-mail and just sign up again.
They probably won't catch it.

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joe_the_user
I found this:

[http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-user-accounts-
accidental...](http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-user-accounts-accidentally-
disabled-being-restored-2010-11)

~~~
Be-The-Water
Interesting, thanks.

It's a good thing they developed a non-delete model.

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konad
I've been banned by HN twice, no appeal, no explanation, in fact you don't
even know because you can still log in and post comments. The first time it
took me a couple of weeks of "how come no-one replies to my posts any more"
before I thought anything was wrong.

The first one - I have no idea why - I guess the -4 (which I still think is a
valid comment)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=skwiddor> \- 100+ karma

Ok so next time round I'll be more careful, got 400+ karma

Then one day you slip in a joke and you're toast

<http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=wendroid>

