As I was merrily Facebook’ing, the site redirected me to a big, awful, center-page modal that loudly proclaimed WE HAVE SUSPENDED YOUR ACCOUNT. The abruptness of this immediately had me thinking it was some sort of redirect injection or at least a kind of malware. Like, it had to be. There’s no way Facebook just chops off longtime accounts like this, right? Wrong.

This happened just about two seconds after posting a link to a news story at Bay Observer. It was using a redirector that I’ve used before. I could sense that Facebook considers this a news site, and the timing being what it was, that’s why this suspension. Consider where we are as a web community: The mere act of linking to a news story (for political reasons or whatever) is enough to be forcefully removed from someone site; automagically. This basically breaks just about everything the web was created to do, namely web linking in the Hypertext Transfer Protocol HTTP/0.9. We need to bring back open standards and automagically cancel Facebook.

However, as enshittified as Facebook has become, the page that shows my account being suspended explains nothing about why. This is likely due to some stupid algorithm that, instead of saying “please don’t share news stories,” has been programmed to instead seek and destroy.
Sure, I’ve been on Facebook for decades, sure it’s an account that manages several pages of importance. But, gosh, Facebook, the account and, well, you aren’t that important. To imagine someone’s livelihood had now just been ripped away because of a news link (or whatever else the garbage Facebook thinks is not following their utterly vague “community standards”).

So, I appealed. Why not.

First, they ask you to verify a phone number, so I did that.
Then, they ask for a selfie. Since I’m at my computer, that was not possible, so I took a photo from my phone, moved it over to the computer and gave it to Facebook. It was time to launch an “appeal.”

What’s interesting here is that if who or whatever nimrod over there decides I’ve failed some test, I will not get my account back, never know why it was taken away, and this will be permanent. For once, I’m rooting for Facebook make the right call on this one. Make me a happy camper and take your shitty site out of my life, nonconsensually of course.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Update: I am sad to report that Facebook has restored my account. Lord only knows what the f*uck they’re doing over there.

After the restoration, I was asked if I had any comments. Okay stupid Facebook, you don’t have to tell me what’s going on, but somehow you want to know my brain droppings? Sure.

Let’s get back to doomscrolling!