Army of fake Zuckerbergs march on EU parliament ahead of the CEO hearing, Avaaz, Flickr
It started when my friend (say John) asked for backlinks to a newly developed website via his facebook. Here is what he described the experience.
I can’t remember the wording of the post very well and I don’t have access to my account anymore.
As far as I remember, I asked on a Facebook group for a “link-building” project. I didn't mention any monetary reward for a link. I asked them to contact me for more details of this project at the end of the post.
Some minutes later, I got a notification from Facebook itself and they said that my post violates their community standards.
It was surprising and I could not understand what would be against their standards, but I was going to remove that post.
I was just on my way to remove that post, suddenly the page is suddenly reloaded automatically and Facebook is asking to upload my own photo.
Why!? Is it mandatory to update my own photo?
I admitted that I just left my Facebook without any photo on the profile, but I just simply don't want to disclose my own photo.
Again, there is no other way but I uploaded my own, real photo, and here’s what I got so far . . .
It’s been almost a week, and still no updates from them.
So I am still not completely sure what’s the main reason they locked my account.
But my estimations would be one of these:
I left my Facebook profile picture blank. (However, he updated it!)
Asking for back-link on one of the Facebook group. (Yet, it is just a post. Does it violate the Facebook policy to ask backlink? It is a normal practice when we create a new website!)
One of my friends said because I don’t verify my account with my mobile phone number. (Is it really required?)
Some references also suggested that my IP range was on their banned list. (But he just used a normal provider and no idea why the IP is on the blacklist! There may be some “blacklisted IPs” but I cannot believe that a dynamic IP provided by a normal provider is in the list)
Inside the parenthesis are commented by me
We know that Facebook arrogantly ignored a lot of valid alerts and allowed the huge mess on the 2016 election of US.
Now, the pendulum swings to the opposite so widely and they seem to play an arbiter to remove a real post/account, and to disrupt the valid communication as my friend experienced.
Do they really use a sophisticated enough method to identify a fake account and post, or simply enjoy the de-facto monopoly with a cheap algorithm?
For fairness, I respect the works of Facebook AI Research (FAIR) group. There are a lot of talented engineers in the group and publications by them. Their Mask-RCNN algorithm is very cool and useful.
Facebook has the right to ban any account as it is mentioned in the term and condition. Facebook is a technically trustable platform.
However, it seems to have its own political position, but it is not clear to me. They might consider to be at a neutral position and bans some account/post without a clear notification. Anyone cannot be an absolutely neutral position for whatever things, and once someone claims to be in a neutral position and start judging others, it is a sign of dictatorship.
Please comment your opinion if you have a similarly frustrating experience. John is still waiting to regain the access to his own account.