by robg on 12/24/21, 3:15 PM
Maybe my age (finished grad school in 2004) but I never created a Facebook account. Seemed like a waste of time and energy. And now? I’d gladly buy an Occulus but nope, need a Facebook account. Seems like a horrid company and where the cigarettes analogy seems apt and I used to smoke Marlboros as a kid. A lot of kids are now addicted to a product that actively harms them, Instaspam especially. Frankly love that FB makes it so hard to read stuff posted. Every time I’m linked to something there and it requires an account, I nope right out. I’ve banned Facebook from my life. Highly recommend not what you’ve lost, but what you’ll find instead.
by CommieBobDole on 12/24/21, 4:47 PM
It amazes me that on the one hand, people keep getting banned from Facebook for odd inscrutable reasons, while on the other hand, none of the spammers or scammers I've reported ever get banned, no matter how obvious.
Literally yesterday, I was looking through my ignored friend requests and found some random profile that had thousands of 'friends', and all the posts in his timeline were ads for dodgy weight loss and/or boner pills, with hundreds of people tagged in the photos. Dozens of posts a day, every post title full of punctuation-as-text to avoid triggering spam filters. Reported it as a spam account, got a response a few hours later that they had checked the profile, determined it didn't violate their community standards and that it would not be removed.
I guess it's just fascinating that with all that money and power, they've managed to build a moderation system with such a high rate of both false-positives and false-negatives. You'd think they could at least constrain it to being terrible in one direction.
by mwattsun on 12/24/21, 10:11 PM
I bought an Oculus headset before it required a Facebook login. I haven't used it since that requirement was added. The metaverse I envisioned comes from William Gibson and Neal Stephenson, not a sanitized and sexless universe where Code of Conducts written by Home Owners Associations are strictly enforced and LinkedIn type interactions are the norm. Bill Gates recently said all business meetings would be on it in three years. I don't like to criticize people personally, but billionaires have so much power I think it's ok: Bill G is not exactly a tech visionary, famously having to rewrite his book "The Road Ahead" because he missed the internet happening. I'm sure Mark Zuckerberg loves it because his personality already seems blank and smoothed over like an avatar. Do I want to live inside a sappy television commercial where Coke teaches the world to sing and everyone smiles and expresses only approved virtuous thoughts? Nope.
by gtsop on 12/24/21, 3:06 PM
Wish you get a lift of the ban. Meanwhile, I can't wait to see another episode of "vip complains online about bigtech ban and an insider helps him out while the rest of the plebs struggle with their permabans"
by sshine on 12/24/21, 3:06 PM
I’ve made sure to delete or render inactive all social media accounts. Yes, even GitHub. And you know what? Life continues.
by account-5 on 12/24/21, 7:12 PM
This is one of the reasons I don't have any FB (or FB owned) account. You're at their mercy, with all your eggs in their basket you have to hope they don't decide you're not allowed your eggs.
It's not the only reason. Not even at the top on my list for reasons. But if there is going to be a metaverse, Facebook cannot be the gatekeeper, or any other US tech company that randomly and for no given reason permabans you cough Google.
by smsm42 on 12/24/21, 11:27 PM
I see a lot of people saying "who cares, it's just a site, so what if you're banned". But I am reading about people losing connections with relatives, friends, business partners, unable to access services and have their lives upended because somebody, somewhere, for some undisclosed reasons, and without any recourse, decided to cancel their account. I suspect it's going beyond "just some site". And we either need a public awareness campaign for people to stop their reliance on such sites so much in their public lives, or find some solution to the immense control that companies like Facebook have on people's life and how abusive this control has become.
People that have platforms with millions of listeners should start using their platforms - not just to make their friend unbanned this one time, but to illuminate the dangers of the dystopian situation we're sleepwalking into. People should know that facebook is unreliable, erratic, capricious platform, where you could get randomly excluded for life without any recourse, and friends shouldn't let friends use facebook, at least not for anything remotely important.
by TrevorFSmith on 12/24/21, 3:32 PM
If this headline bothers you then go help the open immersive web become the actual metaverse.
by anonimamente on 1/6/22, 7:13 PM
Nearly no one in software development, particularly VR, seems to care about the morality of supporting Facebook. Are we too mesmerized by their latest shiny toys, Quest 2, et. al.? Doing a search for anything concerning the ethics of feeding the Meta beast led me to this scant result.
by joeman1000 on 12/24/21, 7:39 PM
I was unfairly (and unprofessionally) pressured into using fb for a group project chat at uni this year. I tried to create an account about 5 times but was completely unable. Each time I logged in or created an account, I was shown to have ‘violated community standards’ and promptly kicked off. This was on brand-spanking-new accounts. I must have really pissed someone off at fb over the years.
by albybisy on 12/24/21, 3:32 PM
I'm banned from Instagram and i can't create new accounts because they banned my phone number. So if i want an instagram account i have to buy another number. No way. I can still live without instagram, but this is the way Facebook inc/Meta do business.
For me Meta/Facebook/Instagram/WhatApp have to die!
by nickdothutton on 12/24/21, 4:12 PM
In the early 90s I ran a BBS and was a USENET user and administrator (ISP) for years. The SnR of major social media platforms is so poor now. I find it hard to even explain to the young how much better such forums can be.
by sys_64738 on 12/24/21, 3:09 PM
Being FB free, forever, is to be celebrated.
by j_m_b on 12/24/21, 2:47 PM
Metaverse, the next 3D television.
by airbreather on 12/25/21, 1:29 AM
This is stupid because if the overall societal goal was to create better behaviour, then a lifetime ban totally removes any possibility of engagement and education, which could result in improvement and rehabilitation.
(I am aware the language here potentially indicates willing participation in some kind of arbitrary totalitarianism, but it's for the point of discussion)
So this is an equivelent of a life sentance, what's next, special towns where only people banned by facebook live? Or maybe execution.
From Facebooks business model perspective, this probably doesn't hurt them while the numbers stay under some smallish magic threshold, but cross that threshhold range and all of sudden they might find they have banned themselves into irrelevance and be just be another MySpace.
by lil_dispaches on 12/24/21, 3:39 PM
Calling facebook "meta" is the ultimate in marketing people their own conceptual understanding of things back to them. Truly FB is trying to ZUCK the internet. This meme takeover is the worst part, speaking as a mostly non-user of FACEBOOK products.
I dreamed of a OS filter that lets you turn "meta" back to "facebook" where appropriate. We can't bring AI to the OS fast enough.
by comeonseriously on 12/24/21, 7:42 PM
How can I get banned? This sounds great!
by champagnois on 12/24/21, 5:31 PM
My family will never own Oculus products or anything connected to Facebook.
Block and filter anything related to their platforms.
by Yaa101 on 12/24/21, 3:25 PM
Wear it like a badge of honor...
by slightwinder on 12/24/21, 8:12 PM
Let's see whether this will remain legal. It seems EU has some laws impacting these cases, according to rumors. There recently was a case of someone who went to court and successfully revoked his lifetime-ban on a certain platform. This was for a business-account and nothing is really public yet regarding the case and laws involved. So I'm not entirely sure whether it was settled outside of court at the end or whether a law forced the judgment. But this case gives me some hope that we do move in the direction where we limit the power of platforms in favor of the customers.
by numpad0 on 12/24/21, 4:23 PM
One thing I don’t get about Facebook’s Metaverse push is that Metaverse is just an alternative name for VR, and V stands for virtual.
If you’re going to disallow disconnection between meatspace and VR, there’s nothing virtual left in it.
by Overtonwindow on 12/24/21, 3:39 PM
I don’t understand Facebook bans. A lot of people I know have multiple Facebook accounts. Why don’t you just create another account?
by varelse on 12/24/21, 3:35 PM
And that's why you probably should have had a separate account for running your business. I don't use Facebook for anything except some of the groups that remain there and which are relevant to my hobbies. Strong opinions get you suspended because there will always be someone offended by what you say.
by superkuh on 12/24/21, 7:14 PM
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. This person chose to get into a business run entirely on someone else's property and now they're paying the price for that bad decision. They lampshade this in the first couple paragraphs but that doesn't change the relevance.
by helsinki on 12/24/21, 5:36 PM
This reads a bit like a plea to Facebook for account restoration.
by specialist on 12/24/21, 11:57 PM
How do I get perma banned? I'd pay to be preemptively banned.
Huh. Potential future social media conceirge service.
I already waste too much personal time on junk mail, spam, robocalls.
by hammyhavoc on 12/25/21, 2:50 PM
And nothing of value was lost.
by rvz on 12/24/21, 3:36 PM
Sorry for your banishment. Now you're a lifetime member of the lost and banned.
by kafkaIncarnate on 12/24/21, 9:15 PM
I found out recently that I'm "pre-banned" from Facebook. I don't know why, nor do I care. I stayed off of Facebook for a long time, because I figured it was a stupid idea. In a moment of drunk weakness I decided to sign up because I was bored and curious (~2019?).
Nope, not allowed to sign up. No idea why, no reason given. The email address and my real life identity is never used in any offensive way (or really in any way at all). I don't have some weird name that sounds offensive either.
They didn't offer any way to remedy, no way to contact, no way to do anything about it. I just said screw it, I probably shouldn't be on there anyway.
Yet what I know about it and what I've seen of it, people I've known are perfectly acceptable posting hate speech, violent threats, spreading misinformation about people for lulz deliberately, etc.
Why is this company not considered the same as 8chan? I don't really care if it exists, just why culturally is it considered some sort of bastion of existence and 8chan is demonized when I see them as equals?
by 29athrowaway on 12/24/21, 3:51 PM
Using a different e-mail or phone number should be enough to evade the ban.
by aidog on 12/24/21, 4:29 PM
Nevermind FB. We miss you on twitter man.
by conradfr on 12/24/21, 3:27 PM
Is there any hope besides the EU regulating bans by Big Tech?