Franz Kafka’s book The Trial follows the main character’s decline as he finds himself caught up in the mindless bureaucracy of an unjust legal system. Written in 1925 it was eventually recognised as a visionary premonition of totalitarianism. The book’s first lines “Somebody must have slandered Joseph K., for one morning, without having done anything wrong, he was arrested.” Will become very pertinent, as we shall see.
Almost 20 years later Orwell wrote 1984, again, another chilling dystopian warning against totalitarianism. The main character, Winston Smith, no relation, works as a history rewriter for the ministry of truth who wish to bring accounts of the past in line with current political thinking. Once again the book follows the downfall of the individual and the domination of the state over him and was written as a warning of totalitarianism, whether it be from the left or right, Nazism or Stalinism.
Living in the UK for all my life I’ve come to know a political system that’s mainly orientated toward the centre ground and a judiciary and police system that is generally governed by the rule of law, although, of course, there have been many exceptions. So, to find myself within a dystopian legal system while still living here in Britain came as a surprise and one I thought I ought to share because even if you simply invest your time in using Facebook, let alone those of you who use it for your business, you too might find yourself in a similar position. All those memories, photo and video albums, contacts, groups, pages, and business or artist followers, may all be taken away from you, even though you’ve done nothing wrong, and what’s more, you won’t be told what you’re accused of nor will you be given a right to appeal.
A few years ago a Facebook employee, Frances Haugen became a whistle-blower when she made it known that the Artificial intelligence systems Facebook uses are extremely inept, especially when it comes to determining if the content is appropriate, community standards have been breached or a profile is no longer eligible to be part of the community. In her statements, she cited Meta, Facebook’s parent company’s focus on AI is in part driven by a desire to cut costs, and wasn’t concerned about those thrown to the wayside by its mistakes.
When I read Haugen’s statements back then I pretty much shrugged it off, thinking it wouldn’t happen to me, but it did, and it was then I found I wasn’t the only one, in fact, I’m one of thousands.
Firstly, let’s keep things in perspective. I was not facing a death sentence as a result of Facebook’s lack of jurisdictive integrity, nor would I be spending time in jail, however, Facebook was a big part of my life, I had made many important connections and used Facebook as the platform through which to stay connected with them and had invested well over £5000 in building up a following of over 115,000 people, and advertising via its business portal, all of which became completely inaccessible. On top of that, I’d also used Facebook to log in to other platforms which would no longer be available.
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So, you may ask, what was the catalyst for all of this? I’d recently heard a lot about AI chat apps so was curious to know more, so on the 7th of February 2023 I clicked on an advert on Facebook for a Google AI ChatGpt extension. The ad took me to a legitimate Google extension page where I downloaded the extension. What I didn’t realise was Google does not vet apps put on their marketplace and only takes them down after they’ve been reported. This has been going on for more than 5 years and simply results in hackers putting up new extensions as soon as the reported ones are taken down. In other words, hackers can continually put extensions on that will hack your system as soon as you install them. Like you, I have learned to trust Google over the years, but after this experience, my opinion has changed, and I suggest you revise yours too.
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Facebook also played their part in this process too. 5 days after I’d been hacked I saw the same advert on Facebook, so it looks like they don’t look deeply into where adverts will lead you either. Compare that to Apple apps where you’ll very rarely find one that will result in you being hacked.
Within half an hour after adding the extension I received several messages from Facebook saying my email address had been removed and my phone number changed. I clicked on the button that said this wasn’t me and from that point on and for the next 5 days I had no access to Facebook.
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Once I got my profile back I put up a post saying how frustrating dealing with Facebook’s AI customer services had been, and also spoke of AI generally and included several images of me as a woman created by an AI app. I wasn’t sure if it was my post or something else, but my profile was suspended again a few hours later. Eventually, I’d come to find out why, and once again Facebook played their part in my downfall, but I’ll come back to that a bit later.
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At one point I was asked to do a video ID session which involved me positioning my camera and turning my head in certain directions as instructed. However, with no lower arms, that was quite difficult to do and there was no way of letting them know this was an issue. In other words, there was no attempt by Facebook to make any reasonable adjustment for people with disabilities.
Once I found I had been locked out I contacted Meta’s support for content creators which is supposed to be run by humans, with a remit of supporting content creators to enable content creation and help with their well-being, however, after a few messages I realised this might not be so as they didn’t seem to be reacting as I would expect humans to do. Still, I might be wrong on that, but even so, the upshot was I tried everything they recommended, sent them videos of my screen showing I couldn’t access things like my support inbox, or submit an appeal, and at the end of the day they said they couldn’t help me. What’s more, when I asked if the hackers were still in charge of my page they told me they couldn’t tell me as the hackers had removed me from the page, so I was no longer in a position to be informed.
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As it turned out the hackers were still in control of my artist page, they’d taken off all my admins and then tried to post images of ISIS flags all over it. Then as soon as I was let back on they started posting scam-type weight loss posts. Had Facebook set up a rugged retrieval system for those of us who get hacked, none of this would be needed to have happened. To a human moderator, it would have been obvious what had happened and a quick resolution involving taking off the new admins would have saved a lot of time and effort. Instead, Facebook not only advertised dodgy software in the first place, but they persecuted the victims of the hack thereafter, without allowing any semblance of an appeals system. There was never any opportunity for me to know what I’d been accused of or to explain the situation I found myself in. Instead, I was constantly warned that after so many days my profile would be permanently disabled if I didn’t submit an appeal, but when I tried to do so, it wasn’t allowed. Even as far back as 2018 The Santa Clara Principles On Transparency and Accountability in Content Moderation,” Santa Clara Principles, last modified May 7, 2018, source stated:
“In its notice to users, Facebook should specify whether the content removed was flagged and detected by an automated tool, an entity such as an Internet Referral Unit, or a user. In addition, the platform should enable users to provide more context and information during the appeals process, particularly in cases where the content was erroneously flagged or removed by an automated tool.“
As we can see Facebook didn’t heed the advice.
Eventually, I got an email telling me:
“Your account has been permanently disabled for not following the Facebook Community Standards. Unfortunately, we won’t be able to reactivate it for any reason.
This will be our last message regarding your account. For more information about our policies, please review the Facebook Community Standards.
Thanks”
I had spent almost 16 years using Facebook as a means of keeping in contact with thousands of acquaintances, friends and family. During that time, I also created tens of groups and other pages including local interest ones and small communities, so my loss was also going to affect many others as those pages would no longer have an admin. On top of that, there was the emotional distress I went through as a result of this while also worrying that some friends may think I’d blocked them when they tried to contact me.
As it turned out on the 20th of March, my Facebook account started working again, (and I don’t know why, but if someone helped me, I’d like to thank them). However, had it not been for one message I’d gotten from the content creators’ help department, I’d have had my account suspended again because those hackers were still admins on my music/artist page and no doubt would have posted more scam posts had they realised the page was live again.
As soon as my profile was active again it was a race between the hackers and me to get them off my artist page before they took control again. Fortunately, I’d prepared a list of instructions which I’ll put below this article, even so, following them wasn’t easy as it required getting to the correct menu to do so. Again, a simple function that people who founded pages could use to get Facebook to take off bad admins would make life so much easier, even if it only paused a page’s admins from doing anything while an investigation took place. But, no, that’d be too easy. Anyway, that was my story, but as I was soon to find out, this is a far bigger issue as there are thousands of others to whom this has happened as well.
This problem lies at the heart of Facebook’s ethos, and indeed most other money-making ventures. For Facebook, using AI is far cheaper than using humans to determine if someone has broken their community standards even though they know the AI isn’t up to the job. Meanwhile, they continue to promote a caring image but for many, including me, that’s turned out to be a bit of a fake look.
The moral of this tale is this: One cannot deny Facebook has changed our lives and can enhance not only our private lives but also offer hitherto unparalleled marketing tools, but before you invest your time and money in any long-term financial or emotional investment with Facebook, be aware, it could all disappear without any recourse, and of course, be very careful when adding Google Chrome extensions.
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Further resources and information:
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Supporting links
In Frances Haugen’s statements, she cited Meta, Facebook’s parent company’s focus on AI is in part driven by a desire to cut costs, and wasn’t concerned about those thrown to the wayside by its mistakes. (Read more at: https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-facebook-ai-cannot-solve-moderation-frances-haugen-daniel-motaung-2022-6)
Thousands of others to whom this may have happened as well.
(https://www.reddit.com/search/?q=facebook%20disabled%20account&include_over_18=1)
Google does not vet their extensions.
(Read more: https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/this-chrome-extension-lets-hackers-remotely-seize-your-pc/
https://cyberexperts.com/how-you-might-get-hacked-by-a-chrome-extension/
https://www.quora.com/Can-you-get-hacked-by-Google-extensions)
Info that might help if you’re a victim of Facebook’s AI community standards moderators
Steps to add yourself back as an admin to a Page via Business Manager:
Do this as soon as you get access to your account again.
1. Open Business settings.
2. Below Users, click People.
3. Select the person you want to give access to, normally yourself.
4. Click Add assets and select Pages.
5. Select the Page you’d like to share access to. Toggle on the tasks you’d like to grant to the person. Or, toggle on admin access to allow them to manage the asset and perform all available tasks.
6. Click Save changes.
Once you’ve done that go to the page and get to the manage settings, then the page roles, make a screenshot of anyone listed, and then delete them as admins or moderators.
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For EU citizens the DPO in Ireland may be of use. Not sure how, but they might help in getting information as to why you’ve been banned and whether the information on FB’s servers is up-to-date and accurate.
https://www.dataprotection.ie/en/organisations/know-your-obligations/data-protection-officers#
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The California GA may help even non-US citizens… not sure about that though.
https://oag.ca.gov/contact/consumer-complaint-against-business-or-company
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