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Ask HN: Hacker claimed ownership and then deleted my Facebook Page of 50k users

617 points by metalised 5y ago

As an update to [0] and [1], the scammers have now completely deleted my page of 50k subscribers. I am devastated. 10+ years of building a heavy metal community, gone like a puff of smoke, just like that. And Facebook still hasn't replied to a single message. I hate to imagine what would have happened if I was an actual business... I am reaching out to the HN community one last time. If anyone has any advice or can help me talk to an actual human being at Facebook and restore my page and ownership, please get in touch! (or if not, at least vote / comment your own frustrations or horror stories below, to help get my story be seen by such a person, if you think this post deserves it...) [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29706571 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29876423

Datenstrom 5y ago
Not at all the same, and only a minor annoyance but a new twitter account i made a few days ago just disappeared completely with no notice or reason. I think it maybe got flagged as a bot not sure. I made it, added my real name, a picture, and followed a bunch of people I knew. Then "account not found" like two days latter but I was able to remake the same exact account. Feel a bit gaslighted. did I just imagine making it lol?
- jzawodn 5y ago
  Ask for your money back?
  - SirZimzim 5y ago
    I requested a refund of my tax money as well because of the pot holes in the road.
- pjc50 5y ago
  They're very insistent on you adding a phone number.
  - beeboop 5y ago
    It's basically required. I've had them shut down two accounts with zero activity on them and refuse to let me back in without a phone number
new_guy 5y ago
Facebook is a cancer, take this as a sign to start your own social network. There's lots of 'off-the-shelf' scripts you can use (see codecanyon.net) You can rebuild your community in no time and make it better than it was.
- leke 5y ago
  Do you think there could be a universal social database that companies could build their platforms on? People could control what they share based on a parent dashboard and changes would automatically cascade to platforms you added.
- WillPostForFood 5y ago
  Best communities right now are old fashion, self-hosted forums.
- AlwaysRock 5y ago
  Very HN response. "My FB community got destroyed. Can anyone else?" "FB bad. Build your own." Sorry OP. I don't know anyone who can help. It seems to me like FB would be able to reactivate the group if you can get a hold of someone. I don't think they purged their DB of your group.
  - barbazoo 5y ago
    It's not very empathetic that's right but it's still true. People have to stop building their livelihoods or passion projects on these platforms, if they want to have any control over them at least.
    - jrgoff 5y ago
      Building your own carries it's own set of risks. I can't afford the infosec, IT, devops, etc. that a large tech company has. Sure if I build my own and get hacked, I may have more ability to directly effect the situation, but I will likely have to spend much more of my time wrangling tech and may end up being more likely to be hacked overall.
beeboop 5y ago
Plot twist: OP is the hacker trying to get control over a recently deleted community :) Just kidding
- xtracto 5y ago
  I thought something among the lines. This would be a very good publicity stunt. I did not know about that metalised.wordpress.com wordpress page and I am an avid Heavy Metal listener. My first thought is, shit, I'm going to help this guy buy re-promoting his page. But then it landed on me... how good of a PR tactic this would be.
  - metalised 5y ago
    Hi my metal brother, I have nothing to gain from a PR stunt. As you can see from my website, it's a small blog, not a mainstream professional website. But it means a lot to me sentimentally, because it's something I have been working on for 11 years, and a small (well, 56k small) community of metalheads was built around it. The last few years the only content was the end of year lists, but this was very popular on Facebook. I think the main reason it became valued among metalheads is because it's not a "mainstream" list, of the kind promoted by the music industry, every year the same people... I go to great lengths to find out great music. Often enough, a band which I think deserves to be on the top 20 list may be relatively unknown in mainstream media, and both the bands and fans seem to find value in this and thank me for it. Check out the end-of-year list for 2021. You may find something you like. I particularly recommend the top ranked album on that list, Thy Catafalque!
- metalised 5y ago
  You joke, but this is a real concern for me ... even if I do get a person replying here, presumably the hacker used dodgy means of getting access in the first place! how can I definitively prove what I'm saying is true? My main hope is that it will be clear from the page's history that I've been involved from the very start, and the new "owner's" actions will look as suspicious to a real human as they do to me! In the meantime, I've updated my blog to mention this discussion, proving at least the blog part of my ownership :) https://metalised.wordpress.com/2022/01/27/metalised-facebook-page-deleted/ https://metalised.wordpress.com/2022/01/27/metalised-faceboo... (hopefully, this, and the fact that the now deleted page used to point to this page for the last 10 years should be enough!)
dmortin 5y ago
How did they hack you? Did you click on a link in a message which installed some keylogger on your computer? Or did you have an easy to guess password? Did you have two factor authentication?
- Jolter 5y ago
  While interesting to know, for a curious observer, it’s not exactly relevant to solving the OP’s problem.
- metalised 5y ago
  Hi dmortin, I have no way of knowing for sure, but I think it was none of that. I think they simply 'claimed' the page, and because it's was a community page with no 'business' associated with it in the account, they managed to use Facebook's automated 'claim this page for your business' processes to their advantage. Which obviously is a scam, but a hard one to contest when there's no human you can get hold of at Facebook to point it out. My previous posts (see the older HN links on my post above) have some more details about the chronology of the "hack" (if that's even the right word for it) and how the scammers tried to capitalise on it. Obviously I've changed all my passwords just in case though...
  - dosethree 5y ago
    if it was done through your account id imagine you'd be able to see it in your activity log? the distinction is critical
karlzt 5y ago
Consider putting it on Telegram, as you may know Telegram is growing faster than ever before.
rmason 5y ago
I went through something similar and this brings up some very bad memories. Facebook is way too lenient about taking away control of pages. Saddens me to know years later that things still have not changed. You're going to have to reach someone who works at Facebook. Going through official channels can be an exercise in extreme frustration. It shouldn't be that way at all but it hasn't been a priority for them to do better.
makeavish 5y ago
I had similar experience with my facebook page of 200k+ likes but facebook didn't even care to reply
toolslite 5y ago
[dead]
mdrzn 5y ago
Someone once took control of a personal Facebook account for a friend of mine, which was connected to his Business Manager and all the campaigns he was running. We still have no idea how that guy took control since the account had the 2FA setup, but still. No way to contact FB, no help at all, we ended up nuking the cards connected to the BM and restart his profile from scratch. Facebook won't help you in any way.
- herbst 5y ago
  That's a smart security model. No idea how they got in (maybe session stealing in a public WiFi?) But just doing the same problematic thing again.
nopenopenopeno 5y ago
Universally necessary services like communication, healthcare, and social media (the digital plaza) can never be justly managed by private companies. It is an inherent structural contradiction that has failed and will continue to fail our society until we are willing to organize resistance beyond the realm of consumer choice.
- emteycz 5y ago
  Facebook page is not necessary communication. That's telephone and mobile networks. Healthcare is successfully managed by private companies all around the world - even in Europe (the funding is organized by law but still the hospitals are private companies and half of EU countries have private health insurance companies). The horrors of publicly managed social media were already tested here in Europe too and we never want to go back.
  - throwawaysea 5y ago
    Social media is just a basic telecom utility service. Most of societal communication takes place on it. It’s fundamental enough that most individuals, businesses, celebrities, and government officials participate in it. I don’t understand the distinction you’re making - to me it seems fairly fundamental and it also seems like social media depends on network effects, which justifies regulating the biggest ones.
    - adventured 5y ago
      > Social media is just a basic telecom utility service. No it's not, not even close. Facebook is very different from TikTok, Pinterest, Twitter, Reddit and Snapchat. They're quite obviously not some manner of the equivalent of an universal pipe or utility. If your premise were correct, you'd be able to swap them out for eachother; you'd be able to just run TikTok on Facebook and nobody would care about the difference. Instead, none of them fulfills that premise of basic utility, none of them makes all of the other social media platforms possible or irrelevant (Facebook can't do what Pinterest does; Facebook can't actually do what TikTok does, even if it would like to; and everybody would notice if all the other social networks vanished, precisely because Facebook can't do what they do). Facebook is less important thank people have been hyping it to be (for their own ideological agenda reasons). TikTok has more than demonstrated that, and the thriving nature of all the rest of the social media landscape has also nicely demonstrated that. In fact the only real problem is that Facebook owns Instagram, otherwise it'd be out there as another separate mega platform. Facebook also can't do what Instagram does, which is why they had to buy them and are terrified of having to spin it off (another case where Facebook is clearly not a utility). Just because Facebook can potentially store the same bits that Instagram does, doesn't mean it can provide the same service (first of all, you can't get users to go along with that for all sorts of reasons). Those are two very different things. Otherwise Google would have successfully built a juggernaut social platform, instead of failing repeatedly at it.
kordlessagain 5y ago
Thousands of years later, we’re still realizing impermanence is a thing, yet keep on keeping on trying to ignore that fact.
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  The OP's community didn't die by itself, it was killed. Impermanence is a very real thing, but when somebody goes and explicitly terminates something, focusing on the impermanence is wrong on all accounts.
- beeboop 5y ago
  This isn't a very kind response
echelon 5y ago
Your best bet is to get ahold of actual Facebook engineers, and this is a good place to do it. Take this issue to Twitter as well. It looks like your previous posts didn't make it to the front page, but with any luck this time you'll get some real traction. The suggestion in a previous thread about buying an Oculus to get priority customer support is also not a bad one. Do you have any snapshots of your membership base? Maybe you can reach out and start anew. Check your email, as it'll typically have a lot of names and accounts. Also see if archive.org and archive.is have snapshots. If and when you do get your community back, I'd highly suggest starting an internet forum and directing some or all of your community there.
- dylan604 5y ago
  >Your best bet is to get ahold of actual Facebook engineers, Isn't this exactly what the OP is asking HN to help them do? It's not like they asked "what do I do?", they specifically asked for help doing what you've not helfpully posted they do.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- kingcharles 5y ago
  I had an issue with Cash App recently and support just put me in a death-spiral so I looked up the phone numbers of some execs and texted them. At first they were helpful in escalating the issue, but then they terminated my account for contacting their employees outside the online support channel lol.
- nsenifty 5y ago
  Facebook engineers wouldn't be able to help unless they can personally vouch for the person affected for privacy and security reasons.
  - jpablo 5y ago
    Didn't Facebook had an internal employees only support system that was quick to respond a was encouraged to be used on friend and family issues?
vertis 5y ago
Sometimes company legal teams can be the most accessible way to draw attention to something like this, and I don't mean in a combative way. They're very risk conscious, they see a '10+ years of building a heavy metal community, gone like a puff of smoke' in terms of risks, both of bad publicity but also if you were to somehow litigate because of the damage to your business or project. Often they have an email address that is manned because they have to respond to legal requests of various types. You can potentially request all your data (and data about the hack) and let them know why, maybe reach out asking how you can get law enforcement involved and who you should contact after you've made a police report. It's not a threat, but it get it on somebodies radar. If you express how devastated you are there is potential for them to help. They also have a lot more latitude than any kind of helpdesk (especially at the scale of Facebook, and the users/customers facebook has). They're also well connected with-in an organization because they have to sign-off on all kinds of projects and risks. I think `patio11` has amazing advice is a similar vein[1]. [1]: https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1162561822248992768?lang=en https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1162561822248992768?lang=... (I think he has a longer version/reference, but I can't find it)
- KerrickStaley 5y ago
  The patio11 blog post you're looking for is https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-reports#presenting-like-a-professional https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-r...
  - toastedwedge 5y ago
    This is fascinating. It certainly makes sense; in a way, I came to this conclusion on my own without having been formally schooled. I guess it comes from observations. Wouldn't mind a few extra tips and perspectives though, so definitely going on my reading list for the weekend! Thanks for mentioning it.
  - vertis 5y ago
    Thank you!
  - 5y ago
mxuribe 5y ago
I'm sorry that this happened to you. What i am about to propose is not a solution for you for now unfortunately. But maybe something to help for the future...Have you considered starting a new presence for yourself and your community on the fediverse (e.g. mastodon, pleroma, diaspora, friendica, etc.)?? This will take work and time of course and maybe not all members will follow you over, but if you start a new community on one of the existing fediverse instances - or even better and more resilient, start your own instance - then facebook or other entities will not be able to let this happen to you/your community again. (Granted you can of course get hacked in your new world, encounter negativity, etc...But you will likely be in better position to do something more for yourself than what FB is/isn't doing.) Step 1: Research the topic of the fediverse, and specifically find options for you to sign up for accounts...Yes, plural acounts...so you can get a flavor for the differnce in apps, instances, existing communities and so on. "Try" before you "buy". See also site like: https://fediverse.party/en/fediverse https://fediverse.party/en/fediverse During this step, if you can still access the legacy FB community/page as a participant, inform your peers that you're trying this fediverse thing out, and if they're interested in experimenting with you. The more that can go along for the ride, the merrier! Step 2: Sign up for a couple of different accounts, join some existing communities. No need to be shady nor too secretive, be honest with folks that you're testing the waters...and of course be respectful; that helps new members. Get familiar with using the tech (since there are nuances and differences to how conventional social media typically operates, new vocabularies, etiquette)... Do not research about setting up your own instance...just get comfy being a regular user, and understanding the rhythms of the fediverse. And, if some members from the legacy FB page did in fact join you in this experiment, ask them what they think so far. Step 3: Decide which community to stay with in the fediverse (maybe re-create your "true"/"final" account), and then start inviting community members from legacy FB page. I should clarify that like FB, you are not restricted to only 1 community...you can join as many places as you wish. Optional Step 4: After some time, if you're really into the fediverse, want more freedom, etc...Research setting up your instance/community...or look for providers that you pay for managing the infrastructure for you. Nothing is free - you either invest time/money managing system yourself or pay someone else to do it for you. Good luck, and again, sorry that this happened to you in the first place!
- 5y ago
vorpalhex 5y ago
I'm sorry this happened to you. I can't imagine what you are going through. Obviously keep trying to reach Facebook. Whether you are successful or not, you need to get your community off of Facebook and onto something you can control, whether that is a forum or chat community. Start trying to get in contact with other major members. Start giving out a URL to track community updates. Setup Discord[1] or Matrix or something for two way communication. If you need some hosting or a domain, drop me a line and I'll see if I can help get you sorted. [1] - Discord is only marginally better than Facebook and you risk the same problem here. Treat it like a temporary fix, not a solution.
yumraj 5y ago
Probably not the advice you're looking for, but looks like you have a blog also and am assuming that some/many of your subscribers also look at your blog. So, you may want to use your blog to spread the word about losing your page so that your subscribers know what's happening and you don't lose many of them. In addition, while you should keep looking at ways to recover your FB page, but you may want to take this opportunity to create a more traditional forum of your own. You may want to look at AVSForum.com, Home-Barista.com and others for ideas on how to structure very successful traditional review/forum sites and while it may be more effort initially as you'll have to build it yourself, in the long run it may be more fruitful for you. Either ways, Good Luck!!
- prawn 5y ago
  What ideas would you take from something like home-barista? From a quick browse, it looked like a typical forum, plus sponsors and a donation option (which I can't imagine would be lucrative?).
- metalised 5y ago
  Thank you for the advice! The problem with this is that, even though the Facebook Page was simply mirroring the content on the blog, most of the interactions with actual bands and fans was via the Facebook page, not the blog. I don't really know if the blogpage itself has the same readership; if anything it's the other way round: I'm worried that with the Facebook page gone, people won't know to find the blog. And with the page deleted, I have no visible way of informing my subscribers either. I did create a 'backup' page on Facebook (here: https://www.facebook.com/Metalised-Life-112985154608128 https://www.facebook.com/Metalised-Life-112985154608128) and announced the hack to people on the 'main' page, but the main page was taken down before people subscribed to the backup. Annoyingly, this announcement was part of the same post announcing the 'best of 2021 metal albums', which got many upvotes and replies from the bands and fans involved, but it's almost as if nobody noticed the part about the hack and the 'backup' page in the post...
  - tomcooks 5y ago
    If there's a community that's going to hunt you down until they find the info they need in your ultraspecific, obscure, niche blog, it's metalheads. Open a quick forum and work on it, build SEO articles, ask people to share articles on other pages, and grow your community double the one you had on FB instead of despairing and worrying about stupid upvotes. Best of luck
ViViDboarder 5y ago
Yikes! Clearly this is post of a bigger scam with that “Verification“ message. Wild that they do nothing about it. There must be some Facebook engineers on here, so hopefully this gets some visibility.
- metalised 5y ago
  I'm fairly sure the way they managed to claim ownership in the first place was by 'claiming the page for their business', because no business account was associated with the page. In my case there was no 'business manager' associated with the page because it was a community page. But it's not a stretch of the imagination to imagine there are many 'business' pages out there, which are still managed via a personal account only, and can be 'plucked away' from their owners by a scammer the same way! I would have thought Facebook would at least have some sort of semi-automated "dispute" process for when someone claims your page at the very least!
dn3500 5y ago
Too late now, but it's a good idea to keep your own backups of all your FB data. There is a well-hidden option under the settings to make and download a zip file with all your posts, comments, photos, everything. Worst case this can be used to rebuild your community elsewhere.
- kristiandupont 5y ago
  I am sure it would be nice to have but a backup of a community isn't worth much if you can't re-establish it with a "restore" function.
- Jolter 5y ago
  How would you rebuild a community - start a new Page on Facebook and re-invite all you previous followers?
  - tyingq 5y ago
    Probably difficult as FB used to allow a lot more leeway on how FB groups and their posts were shared. The road to xx,xxx group members is a lot harder than it once was.
Giorgi 5y ago
sorry dude, its gone. It is not deleted though, it is merged with larger page they are building. I know because something similar happened to me ( I allowed it to happen out of curiosity. )
- metalised 5y ago
  what exactly happened to yours then, if I may ask?
  - Giorgi 5y ago
    scammer PM'ed me, asking if I would sell, asked to get low level access to check audience, I know it was a scam but got really curious, because it was really low role access so I thought "what kind of damage can he do really" to myself. It was small page so I went with it, granted role (I will not go into specifics for obvious reasons) and waited... as soon as he got the role, he (or maybe someone helping him) claimed my page from another account and confirmed with this newly granted role by me, quickly removed me and merged it into bigger page. As I was looking at it I actually managed to click "Cancel" button several times when he was sending claims and made it as troublesome as possible but eh. It is a loophole that Facebook has not closed yet, I tried to inform them but tools are really rare for that.
saltmeister 5y ago
beeskneecaps 5y ago
I've heard that Facebook doesn't actually hard-delete any information, so odds are that when support gets back to you sometime this year, they'll have admin tools that will allow them to reactivate the group.
- londons_explore 5y ago
  I don't think this is an ability Facebook support has. Engineering could probably do it, but I doubt you're going to be able to get this issue on their radar.
- metalised 5y ago
  I hope so! (both what you say, and that Facebook support actually gets back to me sometime this year!)
- aliher1911 5y ago
  Keeping the data for European users after deletion would be in breach of GDPR, so Facebook does delete data after some grace period. It doesn't necessarily mean physically removing files, but you can do other things like storing data at rest encrypted with with an account unique key and then removing the key when account is deleted.
LambdaTrain 5y ago
Not a response as a solution to Op: is there any recommended open-source project that can be used to self-host a comminity server? I would expect that as a host I just need to focus on configuring and maintaining instead of learning to build a website, for example, it sounds like hosting vpn using Wireguard. On the other hand, I wonder if that really makes it better off than to use fb/discord, since if fb/discord is vulnerable to hack, so is my own hosted one.
- schleck8 5y ago
  Yeah, a bunch of options. Mastodon is a safe bet There is also Pleroma, GNU social and Diaspora https://alternativeto.net/category/social/social-network/?platform=self-hosted https://alternativeto.net/category/social/social-network/?pl...
throwway1922 5y ago
Did you have 2FA? If yes, contact https://krebsonsecurity.com/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/
metalised 5y ago
Update: I updated my blog to reflect the discussion taking place here: https://metalised.wordpress.com/2022/01/27/metalised-facebook-page-deleted/ https://metalised.wordpress.com/2022/01/27/metalised-faceboo... Thank you everyone for your support and vivid discussion. I hope this manages to reach the right eyeballs eventually! ---- Further update: I can't edit the post itself anymore, but someone from Meta reached out! Thank you so much, kind stranger, and thank you HN! You rock!
- weedfroglozenge 5y ago
  And does it look like they'll be able to restore it? :)
- karlzt 5y ago
  Consider putting it on Telegram, as you may know Telegram is growing faster than ever before.
- sedatk 5y ago
  > but someone from Meta reached out I hate that justice is a PR battle.
  - genewitch 5y ago
    Does that stand for "Popularity Ratio"?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - ryanlitalien 5y ago
      Public Relations - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_relations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_relations
  - PradeetPatel 5y ago
    As someone who works in reputation management, it was observed that there's very little incentive/value for the business to follow up on individual complaints with limited exposure - At best, resources will be spent with little return of value, at worst, the business may be dragged into a legal battle.
tonypags 5y ago
Any chance you can share the topic of the FB group? I'm curious to know if it was politically motivated (even non-political topics can have their own, internal politics, too). Maybe someone is trying to silence you?
- philk10 5y ago
  it was about Heavy Metal
- metalised 5y ago
  It is the facebook page for my blog, https://metalised.wordpress.com https://metalised.wordpress.com which largely exists for the end-of-year best metal album reviews these days. These reviews get cross-posted on the facebook page, and tend to be very popular, both by fans and featured bands alike.
hombre_fatal 5y ago
You can do this on Reddit. No matter how successful and busy a subreddit may be without the presence of moderators, you can request ownership of a subreddit if the moderators have not been active in some time. I found this out when someone did it to me. I had an account that I only used for moderation duties. I didn’t need to post on it. My community was doing just fine. Well, Reddit transferred it to someone else and they turned it into an SEO spam generator.
- Laforet 5y ago
  The reverse can also happen with people hoarding subreddits and refuse to hand them over to more eager people. Even when it is clear their interest have moved on, reddit admins will refuse usurpation requests because "the moderator is active".
- ComradePhil 5y ago
  The downside to that is that you have to be on reddit.
yob22 5y ago
dec0dedab0de 5y ago
Same thing happened to a friend of mine with an anime page. She never got it back.
quda 5y ago
stjohnswarts 5y ago
Do you know how you got hacked? I mean did you have 2FA? phone number? Did they manage to get around a plain old password that was weak enough to brute force? I'm surprised that facebook wouldn't be like "you tried 10 times, go away and try again in 24 hours".
8bitsrule 5y ago
These big companies don't much care about people who don't fit into their plans. At one point I was 4 years into a Blogger blog when someone decided to create Google+, insisting that everyone needed to supply their real name. When I signed up for G+ with my blogger alias, they shut down access to the blog until I complied. Since I was (miracle!) 'free to export' 4 years of blogposts, I did ... and each and every one of the exported posts had a Google link embedded in it. In short: to 'free' automated services - despite any cozy feelings of 'belonging' we feel - we are insects. 'Community' isn't in their vocabulary.
jbkiv 5y ago
So sorry metalised, not much you can do and no legal recourse/appeal as you have agreed to the TOS. FB will not help much either. The a lesson to be learned here. Zinga learned that with Farmville in other circumstances. If you can, don't build on the top of some other companies, a FB, an Instagram, Pinterest, or a Gmail/Maps. Rug pulls do not happen solely in crypto. There are exceptions of course: build something good on the top of salesforce and if you get traction (=paying customers) they will buy you. More and more posts on HN are written to show how evil those companies are (Amazon to their third party merchants, Google or Facebook to their users), but you have choices in life, simply build a different model. The lesson is: don't build your whole business with faceless companies, even worse if you don't pay for the services. What do you expect in return?
- ttty 5y ago
  Actually pretty much everywhere you place it can have issues. Even with a domain, you can lose discoverability from search engines. Nobody will find you except exact domain in url bar. So basically you still depend on one of the big companies. If it's not Facebook, is Google. Still bad.
teleforce 5y ago
This is yet another many postings on HN recently that used term hacker as the culprit for what essentially a potential crime committed by cracker or intruder. You won't call a robber, an entrepreneur would you? Using the word hacker for those doing illegal activities just undermine the hackers community. Please use the correct terminology for the benefit of the relevant societies and communities.
- sakopov 5y ago
  If we want to talk about proper use of terminology, the word "hacker" was adopted by web 2.0 startup scene and became a bullshit buzzword. The original definition has nothing to do with entrepreneurship or malicious intent (as advertised by media and pop culture).
  - teleforce 5y ago
    Perhaps you've got a point where HN was originally started by PG for VC related news, if I'm not mistaken. Personally I cannot recall a single article that misused and abused the term 'hacker' for 'entrepreneur' in HN postings. But if you can point out even one single title in HN posts that replaced the word 'entrepreneur' with 'hacker' it will be helpful. I probably can show you several misused and abused the term 'hacker' or 'hacking' inside HN post titles for the past week alone. Seriously the misuse and abuse of the term need to stop, period.
MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
joelbondurant1 5y ago
TsukiZombina 5y ago
Just a few likes, but it happened the same to me, It was important for me, though.
getup8 5y ago
I’ve forwarded to a friend at FB. Will let you know if he’s able (or willing) to do anything :)
fake-name 5y ago
Someone usurped your voluntary serfdom of facebooks property by displacing you in favor of them. Facebook may say you "own" your page on their service. They are lying.
grammarnazzzi 5y ago
Is it possible that, after you finish grieving for this loss, you'll come to see deleting your facebook as the best thing that has ever happened to you? You just got your life back. Congratulations!
herbst 5y ago
This won't help you but Facebook seems to have zero interest in such things. After spending thousands in ads my account got finally blocked early 2021 appearantly for advertising the masks my grandmum was selling on Etsy. Appeals were commentless ignored. I lost access to several big groups and pages. The same happened a few years before with my last real name account, first they asked for my passport, pictures, identifying friends and then still commentless blocked me, removed my pages and groups as well as my semi popular apps. The reality is Facebook doesn't care. And if you build any kind of dependency or business around it you are playing with fire.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

617 points by metalised 5y ago

Datenstrom 5y ago

Not at all the same, and only a minor annoyance but a new twitter account i made a few days ago just disappeared completely with no notice or reason. I think it maybe got flagged as a bot not sure. I made it, added my real name, a picture, and followed a bunch of people I knew. Then "account not found" like two days latter but I was able to remake the same exact account. Feel a bit gaslighted. did I just imagine making it lol?

jzawodn 5y ago
Ask for your money back?
- SirZimzim 5y ago
  I requested a refund of my tax money as well because of the pot holes in the road.
pjc50 5y ago
They're very insistent on you adding a phone number.
- beeboop 5y ago
  It's basically required. I've had them shut down two accounts with zero activity on them and refuse to let me back in without a phone number

new_guy 5y ago

Facebook is a cancer, take this as a sign to start your own social network. There's lots of 'off-the-shelf' scripts you can use (see codecanyon.net) You can rebuild your community in no time and make it better than it was.

leke 5y ago
Do you think there could be a universal social database that companies could build their platforms on? People could control what they share based on a parent dashboard and changes would automatically cascade to platforms you added.
WillPostForFood 5y ago
Best communities right now are old fashion, self-hosted forums.
AlwaysRock 5y ago
Very HN response. "My FB community got destroyed. Can anyone else?" "FB bad. Build your own." Sorry OP. I don't know anyone who can help. It seems to me like FB would be able to reactivate the group if you can get a hold of someone. I don't think they purged their DB of your group.
- barbazoo 5y ago
  It's not very empathetic that's right but it's still true. People have to stop building their livelihoods or passion projects on these platforms, if they want to have any control over them at least.
  - jrgoff 5y ago
    Building your own carries it's own set of risks. I can't afford the infosec, IT, devops, etc. that a large tech company has. Sure if I build my own and get hacked, I may have more ability to directly effect the situation, but I will likely have to spend much more of my time wrangling tech and may end up being more likely to be hacked overall.

beeboop 5y ago

Plot twist: OP is the hacker trying to get control over a recently deleted community :) Just kidding

xtracto 5y ago
I thought something among the lines. This would be a very good publicity stunt. I did not know about that metalised.wordpress.com wordpress page and I am an avid Heavy Metal listener. My first thought is, shit, I'm going to help this guy buy re-promoting his page. But then it landed on me... how good of a PR tactic this would be.
- metalised 5y ago
  Hi my metal brother, I have nothing to gain from a PR stunt. As you can see from my website, it's a small blog, not a mainstream professional website. But it means a lot to me sentimentally, because it's something I have been working on for 11 years, and a small (well, 56k small) community of metalheads was built around it. The last few years the only content was the end of year lists, but this was very popular on Facebook. I think the main reason it became valued among metalheads is because it's not a "mainstream" list, of the kind promoted by the music industry, every year the same people... I go to great lengths to find out great music. Often enough, a band which I think deserves to be on the top 20 list may be relatively unknown in mainstream media, and both the bands and fans seem to find value in this and thank me for it. Check out the end-of-year list for 2021. You may find something you like. I particularly recommend the top ranked album on that list, Thy Catafalque!
metalised 5y ago
You joke, but this is a real concern for me ... even if I do get a person replying here, presumably the hacker used dodgy means of getting access in the first place! how can I definitively prove what I'm saying is true? My main hope is that it will be clear from the page's history that I've been involved from the very start, and the new "owner's" actions will look as suspicious to a real human as they do to me! In the meantime, I've updated my blog to mention this discussion, proving at least the blog part of my ownership :) https://metalised.wordpress.com/2022/01/27/metalised-facebook-page-deleted/ https://metalised.wordpress.com/2022/01/27/metalised-faceboo... (hopefully, this, and the fact that the now deleted page used to point to this page for the last 10 years should be enough!)

dmortin 5y ago

How did they hack you? Did you click on a link in a message which installed some keylogger on your computer? Or did you have an easy to guess password? Did you have two factor authentication?

Jolter 5y ago
While interesting to know, for a curious observer, it’s not exactly relevant to solving the OP’s problem.
metalised 5y ago
Hi dmortin, I have no way of knowing for sure, but I think it was none of that. I think they simply 'claimed' the page, and because it's was a community page with no 'business' associated with it in the account, they managed to use Facebook's automated 'claim this page for your business' processes to their advantage. Which obviously is a scam, but a hard one to contest when there's no human you can get hold of at Facebook to point it out. My previous posts (see the older HN links on my post above) have some more details about the chronology of the "hack" (if that's even the right word for it) and how the scammers tried to capitalise on it. Obviously I've changed all my passwords just in case though...
- dosethree 5y ago
  if it was done through your account id imagine you'd be able to see it in your activity log? the distinction is critical

karlzt 5y ago

Consider putting it on Telegram, as you may know Telegram is growing faster than ever before.

rmason 5y ago

I went through something similar and this brings up some very bad memories. Facebook is way too lenient about taking away control of pages. Saddens me to know years later that things still have not changed. You're going to have to reach someone who works at Facebook. Going through official channels can be an exercise in extreme frustration. It shouldn't be that way at all but it hasn't been a priority for them to do better.

makeavish 5y ago

I had similar experience with my facebook page of 200k+ likes but facebook didn't even care to reply

toolslite 5y ago

[dead]

mdrzn 5y ago

Someone once took control of a personal Facebook account for a friend of mine, which was connected to his Business Manager and all the campaigns he was running. We still have no idea how that guy took control since the account had the 2FA setup, but still. No way to contact FB, no help at all, we ended up nuking the cards connected to the BM and restart his profile from scratch. Facebook won't help you in any way.

herbst 5y ago
That's a smart security model. No idea how they got in (maybe session stealing in a public WiFi?) But just doing the same problematic thing again.

nopenopenopeno 5y ago

Universally necessary services like communication, healthcare, and social media (the digital plaza) can never be justly managed by private companies. It is an inherent structural contradiction that has failed and will continue to fail our society until we are willing to organize resistance beyond the realm of consumer choice.

emteycz 5y ago
Facebook page is not necessary communication. That's telephone and mobile networks. Healthcare is successfully managed by private companies all around the world - even in Europe (the funding is organized by law but still the hospitals are private companies and half of EU countries have private health insurance companies). The horrors of publicly managed social media were already tested here in Europe too and we never want to go back.
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  Social media is just a basic telecom utility service. Most of societal communication takes place on it. It’s fundamental enough that most individuals, businesses, celebrities, and government officials participate in it. I don’t understand the distinction you’re making - to me it seems fairly fundamental and it also seems like social media depends on network effects, which justifies regulating the biggest ones.
  - adventured 5y ago
    > Social media is just a basic telecom utility service. No it's not, not even close. Facebook is very different from TikTok, Pinterest, Twitter, Reddit and Snapchat. They're quite obviously not some manner of the equivalent of an universal pipe or utility. If your premise were correct, you'd be able to swap them out for eachother; you'd be able to just run TikTok on Facebook and nobody would care about the difference. Instead, none of them fulfills that premise of basic utility, none of them makes all of the other social media platforms possible or irrelevant (Facebook can't do what Pinterest does; Facebook can't actually do what TikTok does, even if it would like to; and everybody would notice if all the other social networks vanished, precisely because Facebook can't do what they do). Facebook is less important thank people have been hyping it to be (for their own ideological agenda reasons). TikTok has more than demonstrated that, and the thriving nature of all the rest of the social media landscape has also nicely demonstrated that. In fact the only real problem is that Facebook owns Instagram, otherwise it'd be out there as another separate mega platform. Facebook also can't do what Instagram does, which is why they had to buy them and are terrified of having to spin it off (another case where Facebook is clearly not a utility). Just because Facebook can potentially store the same bits that Instagram does, doesn't mean it can provide the same service (first of all, you can't get users to go along with that for all sorts of reasons). Those are two very different things. Otherwise Google would have successfully built a juggernaut social platform, instead of failing repeatedly at it.

kordlessagain 5y ago

Thousands of years later, we’re still realizing impermanence is a thing, yet keep on keeping on trying to ignore that fact.

marcosdumay 5y ago
The OP's community didn't die by itself, it was killed. Impermanence is a very real thing, but when somebody goes and explicitly terminates something, focusing on the impermanence is wrong on all accounts.
beeboop 5y ago
This isn't a very kind response

echelon 5y ago

Your best bet is to get ahold of actual Facebook engineers, and this is a good place to do it. Take this issue to Twitter as well. It looks like your previous posts didn't make it to the front page, but with any luck this time you'll get some real traction. The suggestion in a previous thread about buying an Oculus to get priority customer support is also not a bad one. Do you have any snapshots of your membership base? Maybe you can reach out and start anew. Check your email, as it'll typically have a lot of names and accounts. Also see if archive.org and archive.is have snapshots. If and when you do get your community back, I'd highly suggest starting an internet forum and directing some or all of your community there.

dylan604 5y ago
>Your best bet is to get ahold of actual Facebook engineers, Isn't this exactly what the OP is asking HN to help them do? It's not like they asked "what do I do?", they specifically asked for help doing what you've not helfpully posted they do.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
kingcharles 5y ago
I had an issue with Cash App recently and support just put me in a death-spiral so I looked up the phone numbers of some execs and texted them. At first they were helpful in escalating the issue, but then they terminated my account for contacting their employees outside the online support channel lol.
nsenifty 5y ago
Facebook engineers wouldn't be able to help unless they can personally vouch for the person affected for privacy and security reasons.
- jpablo 5y ago
  Didn't Facebook had an internal employees only support system that was quick to respond a was encouraged to be used on friend and family issues?

vertis 5y ago

Sometimes company legal teams can be the most accessible way to draw attention to something like this, and I don't mean in a combative way. They're very risk conscious, they see a '10+ years of building a heavy metal community, gone like a puff of smoke' in terms of risks, both of bad publicity but also if you were to somehow litigate because of the damage to your business or project. Often they have an email address that is manned because they have to respond to legal requests of various types. You can potentially request all your data (and data about the hack) and let them know why, maybe reach out asking how you can get law enforcement involved and who you should contact after you've made a police report. It's not a threat, but it get it on somebodies radar. If you express how devastated you are there is potential for them to help. They also have a lot more latitude than any kind of helpdesk (especially at the scale of Facebook, and the users/customers facebook has). They're also well connected with-in an organization because they have to sign-off on all kinds of projects and risks. I think `patio11` has amazing advice is a similar vein[1]. [1]: https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1162561822248992768?lang=en https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1162561822248992768?lang=... (I think he has a longer version/reference, but I can't find it)

KerrickStaley 5y ago
The patio11 blog post you're looking for is https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-reports#presenting-like-a-professional https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-r...
- toastedwedge 5y ago
  This is fascinating. It certainly makes sense; in a way, I came to this conclusion on my own without having been formally schooled. I guess it comes from observations. Wouldn't mind a few extra tips and perspectives though, so definitely going on my reading list for the weekend! Thanks for mentioning it.
- vertis 5y ago
  Thank you!
- 5y ago

mxuribe 5y ago

I'm sorry that this happened to you. What i am about to propose is not a solution for you for now unfortunately. But maybe something to help for the future...Have you considered starting a new presence for yourself and your community on the fediverse (e.g. mastodon, pleroma, diaspora, friendica, etc.)?? This will take work and time of course and maybe not all members will follow you over, but if you start a new community on one of the existing fediverse instances - or even better and more resilient, start your own instance - then facebook or other entities will not be able to let this happen to you/your community again. (Granted you can of course get hacked in your new world, encounter negativity, etc...But you will likely be in better position to do something more for yourself than what FB is/isn't doing.) Step 1: Research the topic of the fediverse, and specifically find options for you to sign up for accounts...Yes, plural acounts...so you can get a flavor for the differnce in apps, instances, existing communities and so on. "Try" before you "buy". See also site like: https://fediverse.party/en/fediverse https://fediverse.party/en/fediverse During this step, if you can still access the legacy FB community/page as a participant, inform your peers that you're trying this fediverse thing out, and if they're interested in experimenting with you. The more that can go along for the ride, the merrier! Step 2: Sign up for a couple of different accounts, join some existing communities. No need to be shady nor too secretive, be honest with folks that you're testing the waters...and of course be respectful; that helps new members. Get familiar with using the tech (since there are nuances and differences to how conventional social media typically operates, new vocabularies, etiquette)... Do not research about setting up your own instance...just get comfy being a regular user, and understanding the rhythms of the fediverse. And, if some members from the legacy FB page did in fact join you in this experiment, ask them what they think so far. Step 3: Decide which community to stay with in the fediverse (maybe re-create your "true"/"final" account), and then start inviting community members from legacy FB page. I should clarify that like FB, you are not restricted to only 1 community...you can join as many places as you wish. Optional Step 4: After some time, if you're really into the fediverse, want more freedom, etc...Research setting up your instance/community...or look for providers that you pay for managing the infrastructure for you. Nothing is free - you either invest time/money managing system yourself or pay someone else to do it for you. Good luck, and again, sorry that this happened to you in the first place!

5y ago

vorpalhex 5y ago

I'm sorry this happened to you. I can't imagine what you are going through. Obviously keep trying to reach Facebook. Whether you are successful or not, you need to get your community off of Facebook and onto something you can control, whether that is a forum or chat community. Start trying to get in contact with other major members. Start giving out a URL to track community updates. Setup Discord[1] or Matrix or something for two way communication. If you need some hosting or a domain, drop me a line and I'll see if I can help get you sorted. [1] - Discord is only marginally better than Facebook and you risk the same problem here. Treat it like a temporary fix, not a solution.

yumraj 5y ago

Probably not the advice you're looking for, but looks like you have a blog also and am assuming that some/many of your subscribers also look at your blog. So, you may want to use your blog to spread the word about losing your page so that your subscribers know what's happening and you don't lose many of them. In addition, while you should keep looking at ways to recover your FB page, but you may want to take this opportunity to create a more traditional forum of your own. You may want to look at AVSForum.com, Home-Barista.com and others for ideas on how to structure very successful traditional review/forum sites and while it may be more effort initially as you'll have to build it yourself, in the long run it may be more fruitful for you. Either ways, Good Luck!!

prawn 5y ago
What ideas would you take from something like home-barista? From a quick browse, it looked like a typical forum, plus sponsors and a donation option (which I can't imagine would be lucrative?).
metalised 5y ago
Thank you for the advice! The problem with this is that, even though the Facebook Page was simply mirroring the content on the blog, most of the interactions with actual bands and fans was via the Facebook page, not the blog. I don't really know if the blogpage itself has the same readership; if anything it's the other way round: I'm worried that with the Facebook page gone, people won't know to find the blog. And with the page deleted, I have no visible way of informing my subscribers either. I did create a 'backup' page on Facebook (here: https://www.facebook.com/Metalised-Life-112985154608128 https://www.facebook.com/Metalised-Life-112985154608128) and announced the hack to people on the 'main' page, but the main page was taken down before people subscribed to the backup. Annoyingly, this announcement was part of the same post announcing the 'best of 2021 metal albums', which got many upvotes and replies from the bands and fans involved, but it's almost as if nobody noticed the part about the hack and the 'backup' page in the post...
- tomcooks 5y ago
  If there's a community that's going to hunt you down until they find the info they need in your ultraspecific, obscure, niche blog, it's metalheads. Open a quick forum and work on it, build SEO articles, ask people to share articles on other pages, and grow your community double the one you had on FB instead of despairing and worrying about stupid upvotes. Best of luck

ViViDboarder 5y ago

Yikes! Clearly this is post of a bigger scam with that “Verification“ message. Wild that they do nothing about it. There must be some Facebook engineers on here, so hopefully this gets some visibility.

metalised 5y ago
I'm fairly sure the way they managed to claim ownership in the first place was by 'claiming the page for their business', because no business account was associated with the page. In my case there was no 'business manager' associated with the page because it was a community page. But it's not a stretch of the imagination to imagine there are many 'business' pages out there, which are still managed via a personal account only, and can be 'plucked away' from their owners by a scammer the same way! I would have thought Facebook would at least have some sort of semi-automated "dispute" process for when someone claims your page at the very least!

dn3500 5y ago

Too late now, but it's a good idea to keep your own backups of all your FB data. There is a well-hidden option under the settings to make and download a zip file with all your posts, comments, photos, everything. Worst case this can be used to rebuild your community elsewhere.

kristiandupont 5y ago
I am sure it would be nice to have but a backup of a community isn't worth much if you can't re-establish it with a "restore" function.
Jolter 5y ago
How would you rebuild a community - start a new Page on Facebook and re-invite all you previous followers?
- tyingq 5y ago
  Probably difficult as FB used to allow a lot more leeway on how FB groups and their posts were shared. The road to xx,xxx group members is a lot harder than it once was.

Giorgi 5y ago

sorry dude, its gone. It is not deleted though, it is merged with larger page they are building. I know because something similar happened to me ( I allowed it to happen out of curiosity. )

metalised 5y ago
what exactly happened to yours then, if I may ask?
- Giorgi 5y ago
  scammer PM'ed me, asking if I would sell, asked to get low level access to check audience, I know it was a scam but got really curious, because it was really low role access so I thought "what kind of damage can he do really" to myself. It was small page so I went with it, granted role (I will not go into specifics for obvious reasons) and waited... as soon as he got the role, he (or maybe someone helping him) claimed my page from another account and confirmed with this newly granted role by me, quickly removed me and merged it into bigger page. As I was looking at it I actually managed to click "Cancel" button several times when he was sending claims and made it as troublesome as possible but eh. It is a loophole that Facebook has not closed yet, I tried to inform them but tools are really rare for that.

saltmeister 5y ago

beeskneecaps 5y ago

I've heard that Facebook doesn't actually hard-delete any information, so odds are that when support gets back to you sometime this year, they'll have admin tools that will allow them to reactivate the group.

londons_explore 5y ago
I don't think this is an ability Facebook support has. Engineering could probably do it, but I doubt you're going to be able to get this issue on their radar.
metalised 5y ago
I hope so! (both what you say, and that Facebook support actually gets back to me sometime this year!)
aliher1911 5y ago
Keeping the data for European users after deletion would be in breach of GDPR, so Facebook does delete data after some grace period. It doesn't necessarily mean physically removing files, but you can do other things like storing data at rest encrypted with with an account unique key and then removing the key when account is deleted.

LambdaTrain 5y ago

Not a response as a solution to Op: is there any recommended open-source project that can be used to self-host a comminity server? I would expect that as a host I just need to focus on configuring and maintaining instead of learning to build a website, for example, it sounds like hosting vpn using Wireguard. On the other hand, I wonder if that really makes it better off than to use fb/discord, since if fb/discord is vulnerable to hack, so is my own hosted one.

schleck8 5y ago
Yeah, a bunch of options. Mastodon is a safe bet There is also Pleroma, GNU social and Diaspora https://alternativeto.net/category/social/social-network/?platform=self-hosted https://alternativeto.net/category/social/social-network/?pl...

throwway1922 5y ago

Did you have 2FA? If yes, contact https://krebsonsecurity.com/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/

metalised 5y ago

Update: I updated my blog to reflect the discussion taking place here: https://metalised.wordpress.com/2022/01/27/metalised-facebook-page-deleted/ https://metalised.wordpress.com/2022/01/27/metalised-faceboo... Thank you everyone for your support and vivid discussion. I hope this manages to reach the right eyeballs eventually! ---- Further update: I can't edit the post itself anymore, but someone from Meta reached out! Thank you so much, kind stranger, and thank you HN! You rock!

weedfroglozenge 5y ago
And does it look like they'll be able to restore it? :)
karlzt 5y ago
Consider putting it on Telegram, as you may know Telegram is growing faster than ever before.
sedatk 5y ago
> but someone from Meta reached out I hate that justice is a PR battle.
- genewitch 5y ago
  Does that stand for "Popularity Ratio"?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - ryanlitalien 5y ago
    Public Relations - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_relations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_relations
- PradeetPatel 5y ago
  As someone who works in reputation management, it was observed that there's very little incentive/value for the business to follow up on individual complaints with limited exposure - At best, resources will be spent with little return of value, at worst, the business may be dragged into a legal battle.

tonypags 5y ago

Any chance you can share the topic of the FB group? I'm curious to know if it was politically motivated (even non-political topics can have their own, internal politics, too). Maybe someone is trying to silence you?

philk10 5y ago
it was about Heavy Metal
metalised 5y ago
It is the facebook page for my blog, https://metalised.wordpress.com https://metalised.wordpress.com which largely exists for the end-of-year best metal album reviews these days. These reviews get cross-posted on the facebook page, and tend to be very popular, both by fans and featured bands alike.

hombre_fatal 5y ago

You can do this on Reddit. No matter how successful and busy a subreddit may be without the presence of moderators, you can request ownership of a subreddit if the moderators have not been active in some time. I found this out when someone did it to me. I had an account that I only used for moderation duties. I didn’t need to post on it. My community was doing just fine. Well, Reddit transferred it to someone else and they turned it into an SEO spam generator.

Laforet 5y ago
The reverse can also happen with people hoarding subreddits and refuse to hand them over to more eager people. Even when it is clear their interest have moved on, reddit admins will refuse usurpation requests because "the moderator is active".
ComradePhil 5y ago
The downside to that is that you have to be on reddit.

yob22 5y ago

dec0dedab0de 5y ago

Same thing happened to a friend of mine with an anime page. She never got it back.

quda 5y ago

stjohnswarts 5y ago

Do you know how you got hacked? I mean did you have 2FA? phone number? Did they manage to get around a plain old password that was weak enough to brute force? I'm surprised that facebook wouldn't be like "you tried 10 times, go away and try again in 24 hours".

8bitsrule 5y ago

These big companies don't much care about people who don't fit into their plans. At one point I was 4 years into a Blogger blog when someone decided to create Google+, insisting that everyone needed to supply their real name. When I signed up for G+ with my blogger alias, they shut down access to the blog until I complied. Since I was (miracle!) 'free to export' 4 years of blogposts, I did ... and each and every one of the exported posts had a Google link embedded in it. In short: to 'free' automated services - despite any cozy feelings of 'belonging' we feel - we are insects. 'Community' isn't in their vocabulary.

jbkiv 5y ago

So sorry metalised, not much you can do and no legal recourse/appeal as you have agreed to the TOS. FB will not help much either. The a lesson to be learned here. Zinga learned that with Farmville in other circumstances. If you can, don't build on the top of some other companies, a FB, an Instagram, Pinterest, or a Gmail/Maps. Rug pulls do not happen solely in crypto. There are exceptions of course: build something good on the top of salesforce and if you get traction (=paying customers) they will buy you. More and more posts on HN are written to show how evil those companies are (Amazon to their third party merchants, Google or Facebook to their users), but you have choices in life, simply build a different model. The lesson is: don't build your whole business with faceless companies, even worse if you don't pay for the services. What do you expect in return?

ttty 5y ago
Actually pretty much everywhere you place it can have issues. Even with a domain, you can lose discoverability from search engines. Nobody will find you except exact domain in url bar. So basically you still depend on one of the big companies. If it's not Facebook, is Google. Still bad.

teleforce 5y ago

This is yet another many postings on HN recently that used term hacker as the culprit for what essentially a potential crime committed by cracker or intruder. You won't call a robber, an entrepreneur would you? Using the word hacker for those doing illegal activities just undermine the hackers community. Please use the correct terminology for the benefit of the relevant societies and communities.

sakopov 5y ago
If we want to talk about proper use of terminology, the word "hacker" was adopted by web 2.0 startup scene and became a bullshit buzzword. The original definition has nothing to do with entrepreneurship or malicious intent (as advertised by media and pop culture).
- teleforce 5y ago
  Perhaps you've got a point where HN was originally started by PG for VC related news, if I'm not mistaken. Personally I cannot recall a single article that misused and abused the term 'hacker' for 'entrepreneur' in HN postings. But if you can point out even one single title in HN posts that replaced the word 'entrepreneur' with 'hacker' it will be helpful. I probably can show you several misused and abused the term 'hacker' or 'hacking' inside HN post titles for the past week alone. Seriously the misuse and abuse of the term need to stop, period.

MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago

joelbondurant1 5y ago

TsukiZombina 5y ago

Just a few likes, but it happened the same to me, It was important for me, though.

getup8 5y ago

I’ve forwarded to a friend at FB. Will let you know if he’s able (or willing) to do anything :)

fake-name 5y ago

Someone usurped your voluntary serfdom of facebooks property by displacing you in favor of them. Facebook may say you "own" your page on their service. They are lying.

grammarnazzzi 5y ago

Is it possible that, after you finish grieving for this loss, you'll come to see deleting your facebook as the best thing that has ever happened to you? You just got your life back. Congratulations!

herbst 5y ago

This won't help you but Facebook seems to have zero interest in such things. After spending thousands in ads my account got finally blocked early 2021 appearantly for advertising the masks my grandmum was selling on Etsy. Appeals were commentless ignored. I lost access to several big groups and pages. The same happened a few years before with my last real name account, first they asked for my passport, pictures, identifying friends and then still commentless blocked me, removed my pages and groups as well as my semi popular apps. The reality is Facebook doesn't care. And if you build any kind of dependency or business around it you are playing with fire.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]