UPDATE: My account is back! Turns out I had test account(s) (as a developer) that weren’t officially “test” accounts by Facebook’s standards. I wish Facebook would have notified me in some manner. They should definitely be more careful with this if they want people to trust them with all of that personal data. This made me think a lot about how much precious “information” (memories) I trust they will keep available to me. Anyway, it is good to be back! Thanks everyone for your support and insights.
Facebook disabled my account, and didn’t tell me why. The other day, as I was trying to comment on a Lifehacker thread using their super-cool Facebook Connect integration, I received this message:
HUH?! Disabled? How could my account be disabled? How could they take away from me my main means of communicating with my friends back in San Francisco, and everywhere else? Now I can’t even play Scrabble with my own mother!? Oh, yeah, AND WHY THE FUCK WAS MY ACCOUNT DISABLED?
At first I thought maybe it was this Tweet:
I figured, probably the words “teen sex”, followed by a link, set off some sort of flag when it was syndicated to my status message. One would think they would have a more sophisticated system for screening these things, but whatever. I sent them a message explaining this may have been it.
Then it was pointed out to me that since this tweet started with an “@” it probably wasn’t syndicated to my status message. The mystery continues.
Then I remembered a message I got a few weeks ago, regarding a video I posted that included a song by Spoon.
Hello,
We have removed your video entitled “Proportional Design Technique Time Lapse” uploaded at 8:20pm February 4th, 2009. We did this because we learned that your video might include copyrighted material owned by a third party, such as a video clip or background audio.
If you are the copyright owner, or have permission from the rights holder to upload and distribute this material on Facebook, you may file a counter notice of alleged infringement by following the link below.
Please note that if you re-upload this video without filing a counter notice, or if you upload another video that infringes on the rights of a third party, our system will again remove the content. This could cause your access to the Facebook Video application to be disabled, or your Facebook account to be disabled.
For any other questions, view our Help page.
The Facebook Team
“Okay,” I thought. A little anal, considering the video is only being shared with my friends, but whatever. Typical sort of language for this thing: “this could cause your access to the Facebook Video application to be disabled, or your Facebook account to be disabled.” Surely this language is for flagrant offenders. Anyway. Done deal. I can go on with my life, and spend the rest of my days throwing as many sheep at my friends as I wish.
Well, I guess there was one other video I had up that had a copyrighted song. A little experiment I did with processing.org and a Crystal Castles tune. I uploaded this video well before the Spoon one, so I didn’t think to take it down. Besides, they’ll just take it down and send me another message. Right? Right?
So, I’m left to assume that this was the egregious violation I had committed – putting up a video with a soundtrack that included a copyrighted song. By a group that, incidentally has had some copyright troubles themselves.
It’s been about 48 hours since my account was disabled, and still no comment from Facebook, or response to my inquiry. It’s as if my very existence has just gone into the ether. All those comments from my regular status updates via Twitter – shall be no more. Unless I get my account back.
Oh yeah, and that Facebook application that I spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours developing (which was also just about killed by the new API) what happens to that?
- Something is fucked here: yes, I did violate the Facebook Terms of Use by uploading a copyrighted video. In fact – TWO of them. But really guys? Disable my account? And cut off access to a portion of my business without word of when, why, whatTF? That’s a dick move. Would the same happen were I to publish a picture of the Eiffel Tower at night, or a picture of The Lone Cypress?
- Everyone should know: Facebook needs to know that if they are going to encourage users to invest their entire social lives in their platform, and to entrust them with housing and managing all of this personal data, those users – excuse me – PEOPLE are going to need to know that access to their own personal data isn’t going to be destroyed on little more than a whim.
- So, those of you on the inside can you start one of those Facebook group thingies? Join this group (thanks, Fayza). Get the word out that Facebook is very unforgiving with their policies, and can destroy this account you hold dear without notification.
If you’re on Twitter, please tweet this:
Save @kadavy! Facebook disabled his account: http://tr.im/h7Ji Please ReTweet!
Thank you. Here is a picture of a kitten:
Photo by willgame
- - -You should follow me on Twitter here.
Stephen said,
March 7, 2009 @ 9:21 pm
Call me a curmudgeon, but reading this blog entry repeatedly reminded me of this: http://tinyurl.com/bow9qm
JVK said,
March 8, 2009 @ 1:11 am
“A little anal…” – LOL, are you trying to get banned?
Ross said,
March 8, 2009 @ 12:09 pm
I feel like Stephen hit the nail on the head here.
Daniel Howard said,
March 8, 2009 @ 3:28 pm
Since the weather has improved, maybe this is simply an opportunity to engage in “real life” . . .
kadavy said,
March 11, 2009 @ 8:15 pm
I know you’re kidding, but in defense of the internets – reconnecting with old friends (and having those reconnections interrupted without being able to notify those friends as to why) is definitely “real life.” Besides, the weather still sucks in Chicago.
Facebook Disabled said,
April 20, 2009 @ 9:30 am
If you want to get back into facebook after being disabled, this website talks about it.
Adam said,
April 23, 2009 @ 1:20 pm
I found out today, that I have had my account disabled. The only thing more ridiculous than it being disabled is the reason why. I posted on my friends wall. No innapropriate messages or content mind you, just a talk with a friend. NOTHING in their TOS says I can’t talk to my friends, NOTHING in their TOS says I can’t post on my friends walls. I have yet to receive anything close to an intelligent reason as to why I can’t post on my friends walls. All I get is, “you post too fast.” Well, what are the limits or rates at which we are allowed to post I ask, “Well, we can’t tell you that, but you exceeded it.” What kind of policy is this exactly? They can’t expect people to abide by the usage rules, when they refuse to make those rules available.
http://fascistbook.wordpress.com/
kadavy said,
April 23, 2009 @ 2:00 pm
Yeah, that is kind of silly for Facebook to disable your account for rules they won’t even communicate to you. Well, at least Facebook warned you – or even told what their problem was with you. Mine account was disabled without a word about the issue that they had with my account.
HARVEY ANDERSON said,
May 4, 2009 @ 7:46 pm
Greedings to all FaceBook users my FaceBook account was “DISABLE” 05-03-09 for to many friends request. but when you read the terms of Agreedment it dose not say how many friend request you can add like for example you can only add 50/100/75 something like that but when you read the Agreedment it dose not say anything about that. but at the end of the day i realy like FaceBook thank you.HARVEY
Brad said,
May 5, 2009 @ 4:02 pm
Evan has now been disabled twice – by accident.
Ummuhan said,
May 19, 2009 @ 10:13 pm
please visit my blog and join me in my efforts
http://facebookdisabledmyaccount.wordpress.com/
Dani Warly said,
July 24, 2009 @ 9:29 am
I think Facebook is, hands-down, the best social networking site on the internet to this day. The site distributes information while maintaining a level of personal integrity and privacy, ideal when attempting to make contacts on the web.
Facebook has helped me increase my fanbase momentously.
However, it’s appalling customer service has left me hanging for an entire business week after I was hacked by someone using a 419 scam to beg my friends for money.
I have been incessantly emailing the Facebook team about my situation, to no avail. The one email I received from Dori, a member of the team, gave me a glimmer of hope, that slowly faded as days went by and no attempt to contact was returned.
From a site as notable as Facebook, this was frankly disappointing, and put a severe damper on my enthusiasm for the site.
What’s more, as I am preparing for a huge music gig in august, trying to advertise my blog, gain employment as a writer in a newspaper in Boulder, and trying to find roommates at a new school, I do not have access to the most useful social networking tool I have, and it has been taken away unfairly.
Hacking is clearly not something to be taken lightly, but neither are 25 emails from a pissed-off student. who relies on Facebook for many aspects of her life.
From a corporation as noted and celebrated by the media, I would have expected more.
http://thewarly.blogspot.com/2009/07/facebook-fails.html
BadSamaritan said,
September 1, 2009 @ 7:58 am
Is Facebook punishing people for being active on a social site?
Here’s the deal. I accidentally violated the Facebook Terms of Service by adding to many people. I was playing a social game called mafia wars quite heavily. I suspect this was the root of the problem.
The application spam’s a lot, so I changed its setting so that it would not stream every little post to all my contacts in Facebook prior to getting banned. I was also willingly accepting friend’s requests from strangers playing Mafia Wars, and also responding to friend requests resulting from Wall Posts I had made for Mafia Wars.
It turns out that if the posts and replies are identical, or close, they consider it spamming – and you will be erased from Facebook. Ironically I was only inviting those I knew were playing the game. They can be found on the Facebook discussion forums (http://www.facebook.com/board.php?uid=2373072738).
If I played other online games and added players that had requested it, what should the threshold be? I have seen numerous Facebook lists for “501 members overnight” for mafia wars. If they can be on Facebook, how can adding 30 or 40 players each week constitute as spam? If there is a limit to the number of people you can message or add in a day or set period of time, why have the “501? lists not been removed? Often when I played mafia wars, I saw other players who had 1000+ friends. Why have these people not had their accounts disabled?
Current policy is idiotic. First, there are no stated levels for what constitutes as “abuse”. Facebook state that they “cannot provide you with the specific rates that have been deemed abusive”. Secondly, Facebook hosts hundreds of applications, games mostly, where a user is required to add members as “friends” in order to effectively play. I estimate that of the friends list I saw, 85 percent of them were made up of just total strangers who have requested that users add them for games through various “add me” group threads and forums that can be found on Facebook.
Why am I speaking up?
I feel that I have not violation the terms, as Facebook is a social networking site designed to allow people to meet other people with common interests. To be flagged by an automated system for doing what Facebook is *designed* for, i.e., “social networking” is unfair. It’s sad that Facebook would allow such applications to be used on their system and then disable people for its use. Why have a social website and then disable peoples’ accounts for being sociable?