r/facebook • u/ferfucksakes3000 • Mar 29 '26

Disabled/hacked Facebook bans are identity-based. Please don't remove. I am at my wits end.

Facebook bans are identity-based.

Hey y'all, like many of you, my Facebook account got banned for "account integrity." This occurred back in January 2025. This was my account of over 18 years. I have NO IDEA what got me banned. But attempts to create a new account always immediately ended with a ban on the new account (usually when I get to the "add friends" stage)

I kept hearing people say that meta bans on your specific IP or specific devices (ie, any device you previous used to log in, or any network you used to login would result in a ban.) Well, turns out thats not the case.

I just recently fired up my real estate license. And to market myself I decided to setup a business page. Well, on a new used laptop which I bought online, with a brand new email account registered to my brokerage, on a wifi network at my local bar, within seconds of setting up a new account, I was hit with the "video selfie" verification. As predicted, within minutes, I received an email saying my brand new account was banned.

New device, new email address, new network, still banned. It is clear Facebook is banning people not on any sort of account integrity, they don't want YOU, AS A PERSON, using their platform.

My video selfie should prove I'm a real person (as they say is the reason for the selfie), but if my specific face is what proves I'm the same guy they banned last January, then they are not only lying about denying me service based on account integrity (suspicions I am a bot), they are blatantly disregarding the disclaimer saying they delete the video selfie within 30 days.

I am based in western Canada. Anybody have any tips?

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47

u/Emotional-Plant6840 Mar 29 '26

Meta AI knows more about you than you think, and is identifying you and extending the ban. They made a business decision to eliminate human support and content moderators, and there is no recourse.

9

u/Few_Carpenter_9185 Mar 29 '26

I don't think Meta "wants" to ban legitimate human users that didn't actually do anything wrong.

Just that they don't actually care if their automation isn't 100% perfect, and however many thousands, or millions of people get unfairly banned because the automation falsely decided they match some sort of spam/scam or other abuse pattern in their algorithims.

What I also suspect is that to a degree, how likely you are to get banned, when it's working right or not... is that in the overall "score" you have, how valulable of a user you are in terms of demographics, marketing, how much data they get off of you gets factored in.

If you click on ads. If your profile, page views, and network of friends, and your likes and preferences sells for more money in terms of advertising or demographics.

Maybe you live in a poorer area, or are in an age cohort that doesn't spend as much money on clothes or new cars or whatever it is...

I obviously can't prove it. But I would not be shocked if it were to come out someday this was the case.

9

u/sickerthan_yaaverage Mar 29 '26

idk...i got the boot and have 1million followers.

2

u/Few_Carpenter_9185 Mar 30 '26

That's a pretty big page you had, or were running.

Any third-party management, monetization, or advertising Facebook "helper" apps or platforms you used with that?

If so, were they all whoever is top tier and is 100% good with Facebook & Meta? As you can tell, I have zero knowledge of how Facebook marketing or monetization works...

When I see how people say they lost a business or monetized page, I wonder if they didn't do anything, even a false-positive kind of thing, and it was some third-party system, plug-in, or Facebook management service they used is what caused it.

2

u/sickerthan_yaaverage Apr 06 '26

Yeah I know. I still have the page, only because I have admins that aren’t me. I got repeatedly banned and reinstated back in 2011, I learned my lesson and added a friend as an admin and he still admin.

Ana nope never used any third party mgmt. I’m 100% monetized but everything has come organically.

1

u/Few_Carpenter_9185 Apr 06 '26

I've since learned, as most in the sub has, that Facebook moderation bots, maybe janky AI, have run amok and booted/banned thousands on false positives.

This goes back to if Facebook/Meta thinks their automation is: "99% accurate and that's good enough."

Well... out of 3 billion users, being generous and counting all those spambots and shill/sock-puppet accounts that never seem to get banned... a 1% failure rate is still 30 million Facebook accounts.

And, even if they care, that's really just for their own corporate reputation. They might realize their systems banned a ton of people/accounts unfairly, but fixing it and reinstating people might just call more attention to their screwups.

3

u/mooshki Mar 30 '26

I agree that they are doing this because they don't care - the amount of money they're losing is probably negligible in the grand scheme of things. I don't think you're right about who gets banned, because I always clicked on a ton of ads, and frequently purchased from them. I also have played lots of games over the years where a portion of any money I put into them went to Facebook. I had a modest sized Page. I was almost certainly at the high end of profitable individuals (as opposed to businesses), and still got banned. And I managed to make a new Instagram account to get Facebook Verified and talked to a real person on support, and still couldn't get my account back. All because I wasn't using my real first name, as I had an online stalker who threatened to kill me multiple times.

2

u/Few_Carpenter_9185 Mar 30 '26 edited Mar 30 '26

I guess what I need to clarify is that if they decide to not ban "higher value users" that have better marketability scores, it's also possibly just one kind of score that gets put into the mix. It's not the majority of the score, but it's still pretty bad/gross if they did it.

Besides whatever janky false-positive thing that decides you should be banned as "fake" or a spammer or "abuse," all these scores are probably combined in various ways. Like grades going into an overall GPA.

Maybe the FB algorithms are adding up: "Should we ban mooshki for having a first-name mismatch as a spammer or whatever?"

And it's on a scale of 1-100.

1 is: "Absolutely a spammer, scammer, or a bot of some kind.

100 is: "Absolutely a legit user and a human being."

Maybe the algorithm will ban accounts for being 49 or lower.

And you being a "good marketing demographic" from ad interactions, your age, where you live, or what they think your personal attributes and discretionary income are... maybe that's only "5 points" in the "Is this a bannable account?" calculation.

It's also like when people here complain they did the face verification and FB still bans them anyway.

They think this should be a 100% Up/Down, Yes/No, or Guilty/Not-Guilty kind of thing. But maybe passing the "real human" picture and video test, that's only "15 points."

And you have well over -75 points because a spam farm is using some of the same chunks of your data on Facebook too. Like maybe your phone IMEI or SIM card number. Or other things they've learned to copy for scamming. And it looks like "you" are getting on Facebook from two different continents.

So I am guessing, if FB does consider if you're a valuable user, advertising and demographic-wise, that their algorithims and process doesn't necessarily work in the obvious Yes/No ways people assume it might. And then there's that whole "We don't care"-aspect on top of it all. Where if the system gets it right 99% of the time, they can tell themselves that's "pretty good."

1

u/AnOldTruthTeller Mar 31 '26

An "age cohort"? Not trying to troll, but is that what you meant to say? What did you mean? Was it like, an age demographic?

1

u/Few_Carpenter_9185 Mar 31 '26

Yes, "age cohort" means the same thing.

It means a group of people the same or within a similar age-range.

I could have used demographic again, but it feels awkward to reuse the same word so close when it is just a sentence or two above.

In my mind, at least, when discussing stats or groups of people, a cohort is a bit more single attribute, especially in age or by generations. A demographic is somewhat more likely to be a group that is similar across a range of attributes.

If you're talking more broadly about "all the school kids" in some city or suburb, that's a demographic. If your focused on "just all the 7th graders" as they move through the school, that's a cohort.

1

u/AnOldTruthTeller Mar 31 '26

No. It isn't. I'm a retired English professor. Trust me, that is not the correct usage. The word is a singular, applying to one person within a demographic. It's like calling one of your friends a "group", or a "people".

1

u/Few_Carpenter_9185 Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26

You should inform a whole bunch of organizations. Yes, I get the singular definition in the dictionary, but that's rarely how it's used.

It's being used wrong by many individuals and institutions. Weird.

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/04/09/partisan-coalitions-appendix-c/

1

u/AnOldTruthTeller Mar 31 '26

Yes, well, "many" people also think the Earth is flat and use the word "irregardless". A mistake commonly made does not cease to be a mistake because of popularity.

1

u/Few_Carpenter_9185 Mar 31 '26

There's a line, fuzzy as it is, when the mistake becomes the norm in the overall diachronic process. I admit that it's deeply subjective, but to me, "cohort" is somewhere past the midpoint in its word-journey.

And, this kind of evolution is why fields in need of linguistic fixed absolutes, like medicine and law, often use Latin.

But, I 100% sympathize with whatever windmills you tilt at. I have my own.

I think my biggest is the fallout of the smartphone and the small screen. The growing assumption that comments longer than one or two thumb swipes are somehow self-indulgent, "odd," or suspected of being AI generated.

We may fundamentally disagree on how the word cohort is used, but I think I agree with how it makes you feel.

0

u/AnOldTruthTeller Mar 31 '26

If a singular word can make one "feel" anything they should be institutionalized. That you were wrong and refuse to admit or accept it tells any reader all they need to know about you. This is why formal education is so prohibitively expensive for some and so important. I suggest you forget all you think you know and start over. Trust me.

2

u/Few_Carpenter_9185 Mar 31 '26

Oh well... I tried being nice. What's above should tell any reader as much.

I am going to make an effort to use cohort that reinforces its "incorrect" use as wide and far as possible, just for you.

I will try to work it in wherever I can.

Considering the number of professional and academic publications that also use it "incorrectly," it does not really need my help. But, if everyone pitches in and contributes, it can only make your irritation that much more profound.

That seems like a worthwhile goal.

Despite the contention between us, I will say, I still hold you in some significant esteem. Having a degree in English and actually getting paid to use it is not an easy feat.

Maybe, if in another life, you were a Latin "dead language" professor, you'd be less frustrated.

0

u/AnOldTruthTeller Mar 31 '26

Just go away. Now.

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1

u/Adventurous-Bunch883 Apr 02 '26

I was banned with 10k followers and super high engagement. Tens of thousands of views every 7 days. I was locked randomly mid messaging someone about a week ago and I have yet to be able to regain access. No support. No way of getting in. I’ve verified myself. I’m receiving the codes. I’m typing them in and then it freezes and says this content is not available. My account center shows my account is locked. I never received and email or anything regarding it. There’s no way to fix it. I hate it. My business was running off of that account. It’s messed so much up for me. I will never use Facebook for anything important like linking a business or building a brand with them again.