this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2025
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Facebook Request for Moving Selfie (lemmy.world)
submitted 17 hours ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
8 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I am ashamed to admit I went back to Facebook recently hoping to reconnect with some old friends.

I used a VPN, and had ublock origin on. Facebook never told me to turn these things off.

After about a month, Facebook suddenly banned my account, allowing me to appeal. To do that appeal, they are requesting selfie in which I am moving my head around.

This seems incredibly invasive to me and I'm not entirely sure they aren't just doing this to permanently ban me based on biometrics. If they had just asked me not to use ublock origin, I would have done that.

The original ban notice said I was using a technology that wasn't allowed on Facebook.

The first email said: "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 July 07, 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."

What's so weird is I don't use Facebook marketplace or anything like that. Then they said the account was just banned.

"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."

As a minority who has been arrested and feels marginalized by society, but isn't pretending to be anyone other than me, I'm left wondering why this occurred. I didn't get any notices about this at all prior to their asking. I also was arrested at one point and so when I add former friends, I don't know if some people are mortified to know me and so report the account and that is why this is happening or what is going on.

Does anyone know if doing some awful video like this would restore the account, or are they just trying to get more biometric information to ban me permanently? I really wish there were an alternative to Facebook. I hate it and they are so vicious with how they suddenly ban people.

I am unlikely to be willing to do a selfie in which I look left right up and down or whatever, as I don't believe Facebook will delete it.

Right before the ban, I was talking with an ex from a long time ago, who seemed friendly at first. Now I'm wondering if this person reported me and this is why this happened. They said they had to go to lunch, be right back, and it was sort of late for lunch.

I really hate the world and the planet sometimes. Facebook is just terrible and mean and I don't actually believe that such a 3D selfie, which is sort of what they seem to want, is going to not be stored in some government database.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 17 hours ago

Do not provide Facebook with any bio-identifiers, driver's license, or other personal data. There is no question at all about their practices. They will sell your shit to anyone who will pay them, and continue building quite the alarming profile on you which you cannot see.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 17 hours ago

If a tech monopoly requires you to do things that make you uncomfortable, don't. It's that simple.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

You are under no obligation to use Facebook.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

I'm not, but it's very hard to reconnect with people. I have dealt with depression and also just really genuinely dislike Facebook because of their ridiculous bans and content moderation policies. The problem is, there isn't another large monopoly in town.

I really wish the government would say that any social media platform with over 1,000,000 users has to let someone speak with a human prior to a ban and the ban reasons have to be clearly stated.

Violations of this could result in tax revenue.

Any state could do this to get tax revenue, because Facebook is so arrogant they would likely not comply right away. All these conservatives who were banned, many of them for ridiculous reasons like saying "covid came from a lab" instead of from a bat, would love to tax the hell out of a California company for being this way. I wish some law-maker would do this. It's out of control.

Things like Truth Social offer an alternative, but only for conservatives and many people still want to connect with people on Facebook. Things like Mastodon are often so niche that I can't easily find the people I've met in life to say hi.

I wish the government would do things to stop these horrible annoyances in society. This stuff could be regulated when it comes to large companies that have the resources to comply. Facebook was smart and basically bribed the Republican party to not come after it by changing content moderation policies and giving millions to Trump, and it's unfortunate that they will probably not make any regulatory changes to improve this problem. Democrats certainly won't do anything because they are slow and rarely do anything ever, and they had many years to address this, and other problems.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

Find people you still talk to who talk to those you want to contact and ask for their number. It can take up to two or three hops but you can find contact info of almost anyone in the world just by asking. Even faster if they're people you know or knew at some point. Facebook is only a theater of staying connected and not actually connecting to anyone anyways

[–] [email protected] 12 points 16 hours ago

They do this for all new accounts now. They let you make an account and use the site for a day or two and then start requesting personal info like drivers license. The scan of your face will be used to see if you appear in the background of other people's photos. Giving you new friend suggestions, and generally increasing the amount of time you use the site. But it's also about them harvesting as much info from you as possible, because that's what they're selling.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 15 hours ago

I’m wondering if this person reported me

As others have suggested, it was almost certaintly FB's automated BS, not a report by your friend. Back around 2018 I made an account bc the martial arts group I was with had a FB group. But I didn't attach a phone number, and I was using ublock and noscript and didn't add a profile photo. After a week or so FB said I was suspicious and demanded I upload a government ID. No way. So instead I just made a new account every time I wanted to see the FB group.

If I were to try this again, I would:

  • run Chrome in a Virtual Machine with no addons. Use that VM only for Facebook.
  • Attach to that account a prepaid phone number ($40 for phone, $20 for 3 months) that I have for these situations.
  • Put a profile photo of myself wearing a full-face halloween mask, or a drawing of a face maybe.
  • Use a realistic nickname (for my first-name) that my friends would recognize.
  • Connect through wireless at a cafe.

Then I would contact everyone on FB I wanted to get in touch with, and give them some non-FB kind of contact info, and ask them for the same. I might chat with them on FB for as long as I could, follow their groups, etc. while knowing that I might get labelled "suspicious" and removed at any time.

[–] greenshirtdenimjeans 4 points 16 hours ago

The next time you take a solid dump just send them a picture of that.