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

TWeaK ,

I'm a little gutted that I lost my Facebook account, if only because it was so old I had a username. Instead of my profile only being facebook.com/<number>, my profile was like facebook.com/tweak. People were really surprised by that.

However they blocked my account because I used 3rd party web wrapper apps and once had a poor internet connection in a remote location. It asked me to log in again, I did, then it said "you've done something strange" and demanded government ID. I actually complied (although I taped up most of the info, like it said I could) but it kept automatically rejecting it. I think it was because my profile used the shortened version of my name, which I go by on a day to day basis, while my ID uses the full version.

One of these days I might twist their arm with GDPR and get them to grant me access, however my local ICO has been pretty toothless under the current right wing government. I don't really miss Facebook, but there are friends and family on there I'd like to contact, and I was a member of a particularly good meme group.

lemmyreader ,

What ? You did not obey the surveillance capitalism overlords ? :-) /j

Thanks for sharing, good to know!

Is PixelFed https://pixelfed.org a good alternative for privacy minded people out there ?
I know that PixelFed users can be followed from Mastodon which seems nice to me.

huginn ,

It's open source and can be restricted to private followers. If you self host it'd be as private as possible for an Instagram clone

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

itsgroundhogdayagain ,

Several years ago I took an extended break from Facebook and when I tried to log back in, they wanted a copy of my drivers license to prove my identity. I declined and made a new account. Unfortunately, I still needed an account for local stuff like neighborhood info, local businesses, kids sports leagues, schools, etc.
After a couple years, my son got a Quest 2 and without even trying to log in, my original FB account was magically available once again.

The_Che_Banana ,
@The_Che_Banana@beehaw.org avatar

For me there was a list of "acceptable ID" and thus, Che Banana's pay stub is now floating around some infosphere.

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.

Blxter ,
@Blxter@lemmy.zip avatar

That's actually crazy.... I have had an Instagram since like the start but have no posts on my account. I guess I have a pfp but that's it. I also don't really get on it.

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

Deckweiss ,

lol good!

Fuck stalky social media. Instagram is just there for farming engagement for ads and make you scroll for hours.

If you want to look at truly great photography or art go to a museum or exhibition.

notthoughtsjustcrabrave ,

There's hardly any photography in there nowadays...it's all reels.

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.

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