I enjoyed facebook 2009 until very recently. With no prior warning, I was unable to log in and told that an Instagram account of which I had never heard had violated Meta rules. I spent a lot of time trying to contact Meta to rectify what appeared to be an obvious mistake on their part, but unsuccessfully. I could not appeal either as appealing required logging in, which I could not do. I was offered the option of downloading my content, but only my profile pic was downloaded. All my family and travel albums and videos were locked away from me. Finally, I started a new account in my own name and was given the chance to appeal. The appeal process consisted of 2 steps, to match pics and to make a silent video obeying instructions on where to turn my head. I was given no opportunity to explain their error or ask questions. Shortly thereafter I was told that the appeal had failed and that my account had been permanently disabled. I have used Facebook as my main tool for keeping in touch with friends and relatives for over 15 years. I now have no way of reaching out to numerous friends and acquaintances. Besides that, I have lost many precious photo albums. No prior warning. No chance to retrieve my albums. No chance to save lists of friends or write some sort of message telling people how to contact me. Nothing. That facebook can take and destroy my memories and contacts based on a false premise with no possibility of speaking with anyone about the situation is… upsetting.
Youtube has a number of excellent videos on how to go about dealing with Facebook when dealing with the kind of situation that you were/are dealing with. You ought to check them out. The bottom line is that you do not give up and keep at them until they rescind their decision, good luck.
Thank you. I have watched the vids and tried what they recommend, but without success and the account has moved from suspended to permanently disabled. I will try again, but they just block me. I had hopes for the 'appeal', but it was not a real appeal, just a robot check and a visual ID check. I am not sure that my description of what happened has even been read - except by AI, which cannot take any action, just recommend actions that I have also taken...
To be honest Meta banned the real users instead of fake ones and you do nothing about it. If make many requests or appeals to recover your account, you gonna be banned forever. All this done by their AI tools. Those suggested methods works only if any of the support team will review your request. I don't know why they don't notify users what exactly they did instead of that article link of having the whole list of guidelines.
Yes, this is exactly in line with my thoughts. I have jumped through hoops, opening new Facebook accounts with all emails I have access to, but Facebook proceeds to block them and refuses to let me contact family members as 'I do not know them'. They redirect me to an 'appeal' which consists of a video of me moving my head as instructed and then they say they cannot verify that I am human and tell me my account has been permanently disabled. I cannot imagine a worse system. It is quite amazing. I have reported people pretending to be my father and other friends to Facebook before and they never found that any action was needed, so I knew their product safety features were poor, but this defies belief. It must be on purpose as something this bad cannot be an accident.
Facebook already banned my two account earlier and now I do all the things there that violates their guidelines and still my new accounts working fine. But, recently got banned for likes and commenting and create new pages or stores for my ad accounts. All this happened due to reporting fraud accounts or those who pretending someone else. Old Facebook was much better than this messy and fake Facebook.
Well, we are different then. I have never violated their rules and I enjoyed Facebook. Their complaint was that an Instagram account had violated their rules, but that account was not mine. So, they shut my account with no notice due to someone else breaking their rules. They need humans to do this work if they truly wish to provide meaningful service. AI is either programmed to fail or inadequate. Yes, using AI saves money, but it damages the brand.
We are now in a world where cold, unfeeling, robots increasingly rule our lives. They laughingly label this as 'progress'.
I’m so sorry you’re dealing with this, it’s honestly super frustrating and feels so unfair to lose access to years of memories and connections without any real explanation or way to fix it. You’re definitely not alone; a ton of people have run into the same thing because of Meta’s automated systems, especially when totally unrelated accounts get linked by mistake. The fact that there’s no clear way to appeal or explain your side just makes it all the more maddening. You 100% deserve a shot at getting your data back and having a real person actually listen.