I am Banish-éd

I created my account on Facebook in 2008. In those days I was working at IBM, on products that were part of its Social Business initiative. That year is when I also created a Twitter account – I wanted to have some connection to the emerging world of social media so I could at least converse about the subject.

It happened that social business went nowhere, though my Facebook and Twitter accounts remained. Twitter never clicked with me and when the “X” thing happened I deleted that account. But Facebook kind of just went on, with its occasional bits of news about old acquaintances, videos about golf and martial arts, interest groups like Damien Walter’s Science Fiction group, and community groups like my high school or my town everything-is-free board.

But no longer.

• On July 8 at 9:32 am I received an email from “Meta for Business” telling me “Verify your payment method to continue running ads”. Years ago, I did run some Facebook ads, promotions for my books. They never drove any meaningful sales and I stopped doing it. It probably was the case that the card I had used was expired. But the link the email included did not function, just a blank screen.
• Then at 9:42 the same day, I received a Facebook email saying “Fernando, you have 30 days to take action.” My account was suspended and I needed to appeal that decision. Again, the supplied “Appeal” link did not work – this one gave a screen saying my photo ID was in the midst of being processed. I never sent any ID to Facebook, certainly not for years.
• At 7:44 pm that day, I received another FB email, saying:

Your Facebook account has been permanently disabled.

You requested a review of this decision, but we still found that your account, or activity on it, didn’t follow our Terms of Service. You can’t request another review.

I can still login using my account, but the only thing that is available is a link for me to download my information. Guess what? That link does not work.

So what the bleep happened?

What They Say

Here’s Facebook’s summary on the conditions for disabling an account:

We may disable or delete your account if after registration your account is not confirmed, your account is unused and remains inactive for an extended period of time, or if we detect someone may have used it without your permission and we are unable to confirm your ownership of the account. (Learn) about how we disable and delete accounts.

Where we take such action we’ll let you know and explain any options you have to request a review, unless doing so may expose us or others to legal liability; harm our community of users; compromise or interfere with the integrity or operation of any of our services, systems or Products; where we are restricted due to technical limitations; or where we are prohibited from doing so for legal reasons. You can (learn) about what you can do if your account has been disabled and how to contact us if you think we have disabled your account by mistake.

I don’t see how any of this could apply to my case. My account has been “confirmed” since forever. As for “unused”, I would say I was clicking FB posts 5-10 times a day, and posting 1-2 times per week.. More FB details explain that for “hacked” accounts, they disable it but allow you to recover. I’m doubtful anyone posted dangerous content using my ID – too many people would have seen it and contacted me.

I have a suspicion that the expired payment info triggered something that … was not handled well.

What struck me about all this was not really the fact of my account being ash-canned – it was the sheer inconsistency and ineptitude of the Facebook software.

Why It Doesn’t Matter

The bottom-line is clear to me: Facebook does not care that their software doesn’t work. Now I get that software at scale can be complex. I spent 35+ years writing such software and leading projects to develop such software, including multi-billion messages-per-day marketing solutions. In all the interactions FB had with me over my account, not one thing they offered as an option actually worked. All their statements about appeals and so on were just hot air.

This has nothing to do with complexity.  The explanation is in Cory Doctorow’s wonderful term: Enshittification. It’s worth quoting how Doctorow described it:

Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a “two-sided market”, where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.

Essentially Meta has no interest in customer satisfaction or providing good experiences. Their view is, there is no alternative, take what we give or take off. Hundreds of millions of users clearly find that argument compelling, as they keep clicking and infinite scrolling.

What’s Next

In the week since my banishment, I frankly don’t feel like I’m missing anything. I know people on my friends-list have made posts I guess I would prefer to have seen, but I don’t think I need them. One thing that is not great, in the past I have had contacts announce major life-events, like illnesses, on Facebook. It will be a true loss to miss things of that sort, but doesn’t it say something about our culture when something like Facebook is the only way to make such intimate announcements?

I am spending time on Bluesky – my ID is @fjsalazar.bsky.social is you care – but so far my feelings are mixed. Bluesky is 99.9% political, there little to no interest group content to speak of. I’m just starting to look at Nextdoor, for the local town stuff.

Something I am definitely doing is just going direct to creators I like. I mentioned Damien Walter, Sci-Fi writer and critic – I also have a paid subscription to his Substack. A golf instructor I followed on Facebook is Russell Heritage – I just got a free membership to his site where I can see all the videos he also posts to Facebook. Finally on YouTube I subscribe to What’s Up, Beanie? just a super-cute animated cartoon channel. Here’s an example, with Beanie and Skyrim:

In conclusion, enshittification – just say no!

Till next time …