Faceback

I'm back on Facebook. The pop-up message that kept blocking access to Facebook and caused me to start a new account disappeared, and I was able to return on my original account.  I even got my pictures back.  But sadly, that's not the end of the story.

I have been getting daily notices that my content had been removed for being spam, which violated community standards, and for the life of me, I couldn't figure out what the offending content was (Facebook wouldn't show me) or why I was getting a notice every day for it - before, after and even during the five-day period that the pop-up message blocking access to Facebook was.  Then I was directed to go to my support inbox, where I found 47 new alerts - each one for a notice I'd received since late August.  They turned out to be for separate community-standards violations.  And then it made sense.

As of May 25, 2021, you might recall, I was no longer allowed to post links to my blog on Facebook because someone reported it as spam.  Then, in late August, Facebook suddenly began removing links to my blog that I'd posted onto my timeline before May 25, 2021 and counted each one as a retroactive violations of community standards against spam! 

And they keep coming - because  I'd been posting links to my blog posts since 2009!

What that means is that  Facebook's "technology" (i.e., its bot army) is going to find so many retroactive violations, it likely won't just ban my original account permanently, it'll ban me from Facebook altogether - unless I go into my support inbox and answer each and every charge and say I disagree with Facebook's decision to ban my blog links as spam! I already got a 24-hour ban from clicking "Like" on anything for multiple violations against community standards for spam; there are much more "violations" for Facebook to go through, and I'm likely to receive progressively bigger punishments going forward. And all this time, I thought Facebook had already taken down all of my earlier links tomy blog and my blog posts when it stopped letting me posting them in May 2021.

I can't get anyone from Facebook to help me, and Mark Zuckerberg obviously doesn't give a damn. 

Yeah, my original Facebook account is accessible again, but things are bound to get worse for me before they get even worse.  To explain it in simpler terms, what Facebook is doing is the equivalent of what you'd get if the government, which banned the drug Ecstasy in 1985, sicced the Drug Enforcement Administration on someone and threw the book at him for using Ecstasy in 1983.  I can't even reactivate my new account because Facebook has since made it impossible to reactivate additional accounts. 

I will try to stay on Facebook, but if they try to expel me, I'll deny them the pleasure.  I'll quit Facebook first.

Quitting, of course, is nothing new for me.   

Faceblock

Facebook is apparently trying to censor me.

This past Tuesday, I tried to post links on Facebook to the latest posts on both the blog you are reading right now and to my blog advocating for the base eighth-generation Volkswagen Golf to be sold in North America, and I got this notification for my regular blog:

And I got this notification for my other blog:

Apparently my blogs are considered spam because any post from either one "includes content that other people on Facebook have reported as abusive."  

I have no idea what I could have said on either blog that would count as "abusive."  I spend a lot of time on this blog writing about current events an occasionally bitching about Ford or commenting on classic rock.  Was it something I said about hip-hop?  Because I know a lot of people of Facebook love it, and I hate it.  Was it something I said about COVID?  Who knows?  And on my other blog, I keep writing over and over about the Mark 8 VW Golf and how I want the base model to be sold in the U.S. and Canada despite VW's decision not to offer it here.  Someone suggested to me that Volkswagen of America found that blog abusive.  Ha - that would mean I'm getting somewhere if I'm getting under their skin! 

Be that as it many, this reeks of censorship.  In the time we have left before the Republicans find a way to regain power and fix it so that the Democrats can never do the same (I guess  I could get censored for saying that!), one of the rights I have as an American is freedom of speech, but while I can mouth off in this space and on my VW Golf blog, my freedom of speech obviously does not extend to posting links to my blogs on Facebook, as the folks that run it have every right to restrict anything that violates their "community standards," as my blogs now apparently do.  But it has not yet been explained as to how my blogs violate said standards, what the complaints of abuse were against them, and whether I can do anything about it.

Oh yeah, Facebook also wiped out all of my earlier links to both blogs and blog posts.

I've protested the decision to ban links to my blogs to Facebook's grievance officers, but the company is hiding behind the COVID pandemic by insisting that the public health crisis means that my case cannot be resolved quickly.  Come on, man - the folks who run Facebook are working from home in their jammies!  They can't handle my grievance because they can't make it to the office?

In the meantime, I can only post links to my blogs on Twitter, which I've been doing since I joined that platform.  And by the way, I can still post links to my beautiful-women picture blog on Facebook - which I've never done, perversely, on Twitter - but since the emphasis on that blog is photos taken mostly by someone else, I can't call what I do on my beautiful-women picture blog writing.  However, it's not a controversial blog, except to those who think women shouldn't be judged on their looks (I'm not doing that, I'm just showing pictures!).  Perhaps what I say on my other blogs is just too controversial for Facebook to handle.  And yet right-wing conspiracy theorists post there all the time.

Hopefully I can get this resolved soon.  But I'm not betting on that.  My blogs, though, will continue.  

Facebook Sneak Attack

The Internet hacking group Anonymous did not destroy Facebook on November 5 as they - or some of their renegade members - had promised back in August, but other hackers are doing the next best thing. Hackers have been attacking Facebook with a vengeance, posting all sorts of spam on users' profile pages. They've been posting pictures depicting graphic sex and violence, posting links to suspicious videos, and - wait for it - posting links to fabulous deals on products. According to an Associated Press report, clicking on such links took people to a page that asked them to copy and paste a line of malicious JavaScript programming code into the address bar of their Web browser.  Pasting such a message would pick up a message or picture from whatever Web site the JavaScript would be posting to.  The content would then be posted on the users' Facebook page, usually without their knowledge. It would spread further when their friends then clicked on those links, thinking that the user had posted it deliberately.

It gets worse. Four other Facebook viruses have been detected in recent days. The first virus is a notice of a photo tag, which people are likely to check. The second is a notification that a friend reported you to Facebook for offensive behavior, which is too temptingly intriguing not to check. The third is a video saying that 99 percent of people cannot watch it for more than fifteen seconds, daring one to watch it for longer. The fourth is any message from a friend via the online chat function (as opposed to a Facebook e-mail) urging you to click a link. Any one of these viruses can crash a PC.

I knew I should have gotten a Mac.

I'm paranoid now. After having scanned my computer daily for weeks and feeling I didn't need to scan it anymore for awhile, I've taken to scanning it three times in two days because I had clicked on a comment thread mentioning me that led to one of those links directing me to a fabulous deal on, ironically, an Apple product. Although I didn't click on the link itself, the fact that I was led to it was enough to freak me out. The link was indeed posted to my friend's Facebook page without his knowledge.

I love Facebook; I've been addicted to it, in fact, and it was because of Facebook that I've made so many invaluable connections to people (and I won't bore you with name dropping, because I did that in my August 10 post about, ironically, Anonymous), but with all of these attacks and threats of attacks, I've been worrying more than usual about my PC and the integrity of my antivirus protection.

Facebook says that it's stopped most of the spam attacks, and I assume the viruses have been cleared out as well. Facebook has also sought to re-assure its customers by pointing out that less than four percent of all of the content shared on it is spam. I'm not re-assured. A piece of spam - particularly a piece of spam carrying a virus - is like an atomic bomb. It takes only one of them to ruin your whole day.