Instagram locked my account and forced me to appeal and send a picture of my face, so I sent a picture of Shrek. They deleted my account

I've been a social media hermit for the past 3 years but recently I've given up and created a few accounts across different apps again. It's unreal how strict the requirements are now.

  1. Give e-mail (ok)
  2. Give phone number (.... eeh, ok)
  3. Use the new account for a while
  4. Account suspended, please upload selfie to continue (no thanks xi). There are also some verification promps where you have to record a video and rotate your face left to right

If this isn't a message to move to indie web I don't know what is

MrJameGumb ,
@MrJameGumb@lemmy.world avatar

They want to be able to make sure they're stealing data from real people and also ensure that your real life offline can be destroyed at any time lol

givesomefucks ,

I mean, they know they're stealingg it from a real person, and no matter how careful you are, they're tracking you.

Even if you don't have a profile, they have a "you shaped hole" and someone somewhere has tagged you in a picture. They still have data on you built from people in any picture you were tagged in, their data gets extrapolated to you.

The ID is so they can sell the data for a higher price because it's "verified" to be yours. Even tho without it they still 100% know it's you.

This isn't about Facebook getting your ID, it's just so the people they'll selling it to pay more.

There's a chance a human never looked at OPs Shrek picture, an AI may have just checked it against real name tagged photos and it didn't match. Even tho OP doesn't have a Facebook account under their real name.

Facebook still knows what OP looks like, and almost assuredly knew the burner account was theirs

BearOfaTime ,

Yep, Ghost Profiles.

Though I'd live to see what they think they have on me.

I'm old enough to well pre-date digital cameras, and of the photos I know I'm in, those people are unlikely to have uploaded pics (very few of those photos are with phones, and those people don't share online with others much anyway).

Genuinely very curious, since I'm such an outlier - it would be really insightful as to how effective FB is at piecing disparate and tiny elements, including the tracking pixels, etc.

I've never intentionally even been to the FB website - the first time a college kid in the family talked about it, I knew it was bad news, but couldn't convince them.

Maybe I'll spin up a Linux machine off of usb, fire up a VPN, hit FB and see what I can find. I'm kind of curious now.

scytale ,

Do you never join photos when in social gatherings and someone takes a group picture with their phone?

EngineerGaming ,
@EngineerGaming@feddit.nl avatar

Unless you mean "accidentally being somewhere in the background of a stranger's photo", yes. I usually opt out of being photographed, was never forced into this.

pupbiru ,
@pupbiru@aussie.zone avatar

remember that your searches for yourself feed them data too

foremanguy92_ ,

Maybe for app banking app (and even...), it could be understanding but for instagram, NEVER! Even for security reason... Bro they don't care about anything on their network, allow soft porn and all that kind of stuff. And after all of that they are going to come to say that it is for security reasons 😂 Stay on the "libre" web, Lemmy is a great start! 👌

acetanilide ,

Yeah I've only done it on government websites because I had to

foremanguy92_ ,

And government website already know who you are

lseif ,

i mean, unless the bank already knows what you look like or could cross reference with an existing id photo, i cant see how it would be any more secure.

TheAnonymouseJoker Mod , (edited )

Account suspended, please upload selfie to continue (no thanks xi).

I find it interesting how people like OP are racist pieces of shit, even though Facebook or Zuckerberg or USA has NOTHING to do with China. This is just as sensible as saying my neighbour in Florida has 3 dangerous bulldogs, and this is Xi Jinping's or Putin's fault.

I do not care about this little privacy invasion fling, because playing stupid games wins you stupid prizes, like this post. Having a personal Facebook/Instagram in 2024 is batshit insane. What is more important is the "no thanks Xi" nonsense that westerners are refusing to give up. It almost feels like xenophobia and bigotry is a part of their culture.

In case the message is still unclear... westerners need to stop blaming the "foreign enemy" (China/Russia) for all their self goals and wrongdoings. They are responsible for their own nonsense. Tide pod challenges exist in USA and not China for a reason, the population of one of those countries is dumber than a donkey.

emergencyfood ,

I think OP is confusing Instagram with Tiktok.

TheAnonymouseJoker Mod ,

No, Facebook and Instagram do this video selfie or government ID thing. Tiktok has never asked for these things to date, on top of letting you use it without account. OP is bigoted.

frauddogg ,
@frauddogg@lemmygrad.ml avatar

Bigoted and trying to hide it behind "buhhhh buhhh it's just a joke guise" like that tactic hasn't been cracked for like a decade

pupbiru , (edited )
@pupbiru@aussie.zone avatar

and in the same way, perhaps stop saying “westerners”

many us had the same thought that it’s xenophobic bullshit… perhaps we all should stop arbitrarily grouping people into geographic groups and making sweeping generalisations

and saying that the USA is dumber than a donkey and implying that china is not is just fucking laughable… i’m aussie, so i have no horse in either race: our economy is almost entirely reliant on china and we rely on the USA for basically everything else, including protection from china… and yknow what? all cultures are fucking weird… stop being so god damn condescending. the only thing it proves is that you’ve never travelled enough, or that “different” makes you uncomfortable which makes you an incurable bigot

TheAnonymouseJoker Mod ,

The whole west is one nation in how they are ok with Palestinian genocide. These same people were the ones lying about Uyghur Muslims few years ago. It is no surprise west is bigoted as a whole, considering the colonialist history of USA and Europe that is quite exclusive to them. ASPI is from your country, right? Or Murdoch network? Guess what, Australia is part of west. Australia is not just part, but USA's Deputy Sheriff in Asia region, and even have their military bases where you people are disallowed from going. Australia also loves to harass or kill Indian immigrants, so it is part of the problem.

As for the donkey part, I know of only one country at large in the world, where people have the audacity to do moral grandstanding while supporting overseas genocide and wars silently, and not even knowing where countries are on map. You are the laughable simp for west.

It is perfectly okay to call out on and shit on this western exclusive attitude I commonly see on YouTube, Reddit, twitter, 4chan, western forums and now even fucking Lemmy. Everything is about China, Russia, DPRK, Iran and whoever else is the "enemy". There is plenty of shade throwing happening to keep the hatred alive.

Westerners are very much one group, considering what all is happening today. The "nuance" and civility is murdered by westerners, by controlling global media, spreading hatred for non Anglos, aiding or committing genocides and doing this kind of stuff like OP in daily lives. The voting pattern kind of tells the story, though, as OP gets upvoted with a complete acceptance of "no thanks xi" racism where there is no role of China. It is okay for you people, and in the future there will never be a discussion on this sort of behaviour. Go to 4chan if you want to be okay with it. They do it in every paragraph.

Steamymoomilk ,
@Steamymoomilk@sh.itjust.works avatar

Follow up message be like

"Hi this is mark from instagram, so a face scan wasnt enough to verify your account. We sent you vials to fill with your dna, so we can be 100% sure.just to verify that you are who you say you are thanks!."

Raiderkev ,

🍆💦

Templa ,
@Templa@beehaw.org avatar

I've had this happen and did upload the selfie but I think it happened because I was blocking some extra stuff that it was flagging my account to be automated

vk6flab ,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

It's right up there with random requirements to upload government photo id to suppliers in a different legal system. Hard Pass.

(I'm looking at you, PayPal, Airbnb and Stripe)

pb42184 ,

Yeah, I've been using PayPal and AirBnB for years but if they ever start req... excuse me, WHEN they start requiring government ID I'm out.

I never tried Stripe

vk6flab ,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

Here in Australia, they were attempting to force us to provide Government Photo ID on Airbnb several years ago, we stopped using them instead.

There's a Know Your Customer (KYC) legislation that keeps being interpreted by numpties as requiring that they store these documents, rather than identify the user, create an account and dispose of the documents, which is making these companies rich hunting ground for infiltration by groups wanting to monetize personal data and provide identity theft services.

pb42184 ,

That sucks. Sorry you have to deal with that.

Zagorath ,
@Zagorath@aussie.zone avatar

I had one of these with a new account recently. I forget what platform it was, but it wasn't anything from Meta. Didn't need to move your face in any specific way, but it was obviously doing some checks for signs of life so a simple photo wouldn't work. I found a video of some random dude on YouTube just staring at the camera, and I pointed my camera my computer screen while that played. Difficult, considering they only allowed the front-facing camera to work.

pupbiru ,
@pupbiru@aussie.zone avatar

the australian government (i know, slightly different level of security and requirement) does an interesting thing where when you take a photo in their identity app it flashes a bunch of different colours very quickly. i assume it takes several photos with different colours to help ensure that shadows are behaving correctly (perhaps it also helps with adding detail for facial recognition and rejection?)

… kinda unrelated, but i’ve always found it fascinating

helenslunch ,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

Account suspended, please upload selfie to continue (no thanks xi).

I mean, I hate Facebook as much as the next guy but...I'm pretty sure your Facebook page probably already has hundreds of photos of you, so it doesn't seem like a big ask, but it also seems like a terrible verification method...

ReversalHatchery ,

I've been a social media hermit for the past 3 years but recently

I doubt that they have uploaded any kind of photos

helenslunch ,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

They said "for the past 3 years", indicating they were using it previously.

7eter ,

[Thread, post or comment was deleted by the author]

    •
    helenslunch ,
    @helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

    What is your point? Do you just not realize the world existed prior to 3 years ago?

    ReversalHatchery ,

    You're right, I misunderstood it

    LostXOR ,

    I've had that a few times on my accounts (I scrape content so they get suspended relatively often) and I always just grab a photo from thispersondoesnotexist.com and crop out the watermark. It hasn't failed me yet.

    delirious_owl , (edited )
    @delirious_owl@discuss.online avatar

    Do you have a good recommendation for when they ask for a photo ID? I read about OnlyFake, but its down and I can't find an alternative.

    Basically I want thisIDdoesnotexist

    LostXOR ,

    I've never had them ask for a photo ID so idk.

    uriel238 ,
    @uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

    I know you can get ID deets here, but I don't know any service that turns it into a facsimile of a state ID card.

    delirious_owl ,
    @delirious_owl@discuss.online avatar

    Yeah basically that plus thispersondoesnotexist thrown into a Photoshop template rendered as a photo on a floor carpet with AI

    Edit: I found https://verif.tools but some of them don't look very good.

    lseif ,

    can confirm this also works with google account

    BruceLee ,
    @BruceLee@lemmy.ml avatar

    I don't give my picture to social media but in a way the fact that you have to take pictures directly from your app is the proper way to digitalised identifing someone. Back to the time where people phisically register, people will showed up to prove which face they have an match it with an non reproductible identity card. But, now I could easily inpersonnate 5 or 10 of my relative and love-ones from the picture I have from them and image of their id-card or another official document they have give me access to, or they have access from my computer once.

    LemmyHead ,

    They didn't delete your account. They deactivated it. It's still worth money to them

    gmtom ,
    @gmtom@lemmy.world avatar

    How did you get in contact with them? They locked my account 2 months ago for unknown reasons.

    synae ,
    @synae@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

    absolute_win.gif

    3aqn5k6ryk ,

    Yeah. I used to have fake facebook account because i got hooked on one of those mmorpg games. IDK what happened but something did and my account got suspended and FB requested me to upload my face and government ID. Yeah fuck that, uploaded some NSFW images and my account got deleted. Worth it.

    tristan ,

    Many years ago I had a Facebook account under my real name, and they blocked it and told me to verify ... I did everything they asked and they wouldn't accept it... I recreated it under a fake name (very obvious it's fake since it uses a celeb name) and have been using it for messaging a couple of friends for like a decade now with no issue

    TheButtonJustSpins ,

    Note that the people verifying that picture are not the people who set the policies or systems in place. You abused an innocent who's just trying to earn some bread, you didn't send NSFW materials to Zuck.

    3aqn5k6ryk ,

    I mean its not like i send some gore pictures or anything. The person on the end probably got some good chuckles about it. Eh, its harmless joke. You dont have to think about it too much.

    frauddogg ,
    @frauddogg@lemmygrad.ml avatar

    Not any of our problems; if you willfully work for Meta after everything that has come out about them, you're a scab against the people and shouldn't be regarded past that point. Fuck should I care about techbros who wouldn't know solidarity if it popped out of a manhole and blew a new hole in their ass for?

    unwarlikeExtortion ,

    I doubt those people even know they work for Meta. They probably work at an agency which does this for multiple services, not only Facebook and they probably have that job because they can't get a better one. It isn't even unheard of for this to be done by kidnapped people in captivity. Sending provoking material doesn't do anything meaningful other than make those peoples' day worse, and chances are it's already pretty close to hell on earth.

    bloodfart ,

    No one verifying images for meta is a techbro. That’s indonesian work.

    lud ,

    you're a scab against the people and shouldn't be regarded past that point.

    WTF‽ They are trying to stay alive, not murder your parents!

    Do you think they are well paid or something? If you have an income, they likely earn 100 times less or something.

    Seriously what the fuck is wrong with users on some instances?

    frauddogg ,
    @frauddogg@lemmygrad.ml avatar

    Still not my problem; my man you should not be talking about jobs and who holds 'em when Amerika is looking at a job shortage because of all the offshoring. I said what I said with my whole chest; if you work for them in any form, facility, or function, or uplift those who do, I consider you an opp

    chicken ,

    Are there actually people in the loop? Are you sure it's not all bots? It's not like they will communicate with you at all about your ban aside from template emails.

    dev_null ,

    I used a fake name on Facebook and one day I similarly got suspended asking for government ID. So I photoshopped some fake ID with the fake name, printed it, put it in a plastic sleeve and took a photo of that, and they accepted it.

    davel ,
    @davel@lemmy.ml avatar

    no thanks xi

    It’s coming from inside the Instagram! specter

    How much US military-industrial Kool-Aid have you drunk?

    lud ,

    It was a joke. Calm down .ml

    davel ,
    @davel@lemmy.ml avatar

    Shrödinger’s joke

    frauddogg ,
    @frauddogg@lemmygrad.ml avatar

    Schrodinger's Douchebag

    reverendsteveii ,

    https://lemm.ee/pictrs/image/c9618d2e-6df9-4416-ab9b-f5735b8a39ab.webp

    Tiltinyall ,

    A wild tankie appears and minimizes China's surveillance state. Hey there you, have any Chinese immigrant friends? Did you know they are survielled and harassed around the world by the Chinese govenment? Your leaders will always fail you, mine too. I'm not gonna sit here in denial about it.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • [email protected]
  • kbinchat
  • All magazines
    •