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Facebook - Utter contempt for its own "customers"

cosmichobo

cosmichobo

macrumors 65816
Original poster
May 4, 2006
1,021
679
G'day,

My wife has been using Facebook for 10+ years. I don't get it, but - like many - it's her thing; I try not to complain.

Last week someone hacked her account, and changed the email address and password. (Honestly - she didn't just mix it up - it's changed to a hotmail account, not just a typo...)

So for the past week she has been trying to regain control of the account, without any success.

She eventually found a page whereby you can provide government ID as proof that she is who she says she is, and provided an alternate email address to be contacted on, but it appears her account is now just dead.

Is there someone you can call, or email to discuss the matter? In any country? Nope. They have 2 phone numbers in California, and both are recorded messages only. There are no email addresses for Facebook. So, just - no.

How contemptuous is that?!

The customers are what feeds Facebook, and yet - they don't give a **** about them.

/rant

cheers

cosmic
 
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there are FB forums (and FB dev forums I think). but I agree, that a company could be raking in hundreds of billions in advertising $ buy selling peoples data and eyeballs and not take emails or phone calls or any kind of contact other than their corporate outreach to the rich and powerful is truely disgusting. they ran a "war room" for the highest bidders in politics of expert advisors, advising how to game their algorithms and stuff, but contemptuous of users. And Zuck is clearly a borderline fascist in terms of his views on corporate power and accountability to people and the governments of the world.
 
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Until this happened, and my wife really actually needed to talk to someone - I had no idea that Facebook were such *******s about customers getting in touch with them.

Of course - that's not what their users are - the customers are those who are paying them money for the data mine...
 
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cosmichobo said:
Until this happened, and my wife really actually needed to talk to someone - I had no idea that Facebook were such *******s about customers getting in touch with them.

Of course - that's not what their users are - the customers are those who are paying them money for the data mine...
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If you consider how Facebook got started that sheds light on a lot of things.

Zuckerberg started FB in college with his friends. The idea was for them all to post pictures of the girls on campus that they thought were good looking and then talk about them.

So that's the initial reason for it all and the why of why it's called Facebook. That mentality has never left and Zuckerberg himself has never changed, he's only gotten more money which has enabled him.
 
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I do wish I had other ways to communicate with many among my family and friends. Otherwise I spend a lot less time on it, actually a minimum I don't even have the app on my phone.

Well it's true I spend a lot more time on Instagram and Twitter (oops) I surely wish IG ahd not been bought by FB but there it is.
 
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Yes - my wife's new account has 2 factor, and a stronger password than previous.

Apparently I'd convinced her not to give them her phone number, as I figured she would be bombarded with spam calls... so didn't have the 2 factor authentication.
 
Facebook doesn't have contempt for its customers. The fact is, we are not the customer. We're the product, our data, personal details, our very own privacy is what Facebook sells.

I stopped using facebook for some time, I still have an account, but I only use it to message a couple of friends that I don't have another avenue to reach out too. Other then that, I've stopped, as of late, I was thinking of deleting my content as well
 
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So - what we need is an alternative to Facebook... that doesn't mine your data... and doesn't charge you either...
 
cosmichobo said:
So - what we need is an alternative to Facebook... that doesn't mine your data... and doesn't charge you either...
Click to expand...
Well, I don't think there's a free lunch. I mean if something is "free," the money has gotta come from somewhere. The closest thing is probably setting up your own mastodon server, but then who's paying for the hardware, bandwidth, electricity, and support? Donations? It can work for some communities, but if you already expected things for free, would you even be interested?
 
maflynn said:
Facebook doesn't have contempt for its customers. The fact is, we are not the customer. We're the product, our data, personal details, our very own privacy is what Facebook sells.

I stopped using facebook for some time, I still have an account, but I only use it to message a couple of friends that I don't have another avenue to reach out too. Other then that, I've stopped, as of late, I was thinking of deleting my content as well
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Yeah, this is what's happening to me as well. Used to be an active Facebook user. But it went downhill when Facebook started to use "algorithm" on my feed, and I missed so many actual posts from my family and friends. After a while, I'm just not into it anymore, and stopped installing the app into my phones. I only installed messenger. For the actual Facebook site, I would just check it once in a while on a browser. The recent privacy crap only justified my decision.
 
cosmichobo said:
So - what we need is an alternative to Facebook... that doesn't mine your data... and doesn't charge you either...
Click to expand...
I opt for the old fashion way, I.e., talking to people face to face. I think the whole social thing where we post all of details, putting forth a fake narrative is destructive
 
I actually agree with you on that... see it with my wife and the "mummy guilts".

On the other hand, there are good aspects to Facebook, such as the easy of communication, and also as my wife uses it - a nice little reminder of events, markers of the kids growing up... (all being exploited of course by FB...) That's the major thing she's pissed off about - 10 years of history gone.
 
Thirio2 said:
Understand that you are not their customer! Their customers are the ones that buy the data that FB collects from you.
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This.

Same thing for Google really. The only time they wake up and take any action is at the point wherein you become their customer, and are paying them for Gsuite, AdWords, whatever ... in that case they're quite responsive. Otherwise, they don't care and there's no way to contact them about anything, because you're not their customer, you are the product.

This is how surveillance capitalism works.

Apple's business model is much more old-school, they just want you to keep buying their Shiny New Everything at steep margins, or subscribe to their services.

This applies to the entire social network landscape. Why do people give up all their data for free? Well, to quote Zuckerberg when he was a bit more forthright and had less practice with PR, because "people are dumb f--ks" source: https://www.esquire.com/uk/latest-n...led-people-who-handed-over-their-data-dumb-f/
 
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The more I learn, the less I like.. And I was coming from a pretty low angle already.
 
cosmichobo said:
On the other hand, there are good aspects to Facebook, such as the easy of communication, and also as my wife uses it - a nice little reminder of events, markers of the kids growing up... (all being exploited of course by FB...) That's the major thing she's pissed off about - 10 years of history gone.
Click to expand...

I see no good in FB, I don't need FB to remind me of an event, you said it yourself, having your kids stuff on FB means they're getting exploited as well. Like I said except for messenger which I use maybe twice a month, I've avoided FB and I've not missed it. In fact the longer I stay away, the better I feel about myself.

I feel that FB puts a harmful narrative, all we see is people that post how great their life is, when many times its not true. People feel compelled to humblebrag
 
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maflynn said:
I stopped using facebook for some time, I still have an account, but I only use it to message a couple of friends that I don't have another avenue to reach out too. Other then that, I've stopped, as of late, I was thinking of deleting my content as well
Click to expand...
I left in February 2017. After stripping my account of all photos, all posts, personal data and everything else I could find. At the time I found a Firefox extension to do that all for me.

Researching, I also found a FB link to fully delete my account. For me, things were getting too personal due to political differences between friends and family. I'd already had a few bad rounds with extended family. There was no joy in using it the last year or so I was there, dealing with a lot of rage and intolerance with people.

Then of course, after deleting my account several of the data breaches started happening.

Glad I left and I have no plans to ever go back.
 
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I (barely) use facebook anymore these days. The only reason I'm still on it is because I treat it as a necessary evil, where I can still be in contact with friends and people I know from the Star Trek convention. If Facebook just suddenly goes away, I wouldn't mind, and I do think Zuckerberg belongs in jail.
 
I have an account that I use mainly for my work. My wife does all of the posting and replying to others for me.
 
There is probably a bigger legal issue as to why they don't let you get back access to the account. Because it's not like we haven't been photocopying our birth certificates, driver licenses, social security numbers, etc for multiple occasions in the last decade.

Whatever comes next won't matter because we're all still the same people.
 
Well, "security@facebook.com" didn't work... That's the email address that notified my wife of the change of email address (performed by the hacker). Took about 2 days, but finally bounced.

And yes, @Jessica Lares - people suck. But, people are also brilliant!
 
Addendum

My wife has just re-secured her Facebook account.

She submitted her driver's license for a second time, and was then given a link that allowed her to sign back in.

For anyone else playing along from home at the "get my FB account back from a hacker!" game, what my wife read was that the best hope for a positive outcome was to just keep hounding FB's various avenues to report that the account has been hacked, so she was doing that every day.

We've removed the offender's email address (after noting it down!), added her phone number (ie 2 factor authentication), and when I can get my wife's attention again, I'll be trying to view recent log in activity, as I believe you can see the physical location of where FB accounts have been accessed from... and I am hoping that I can find the phone number that the hacker added as well - though not sure who is actually going to give a **** about these details. (Certainly not Facebook)

I am tempted to send an email to the address... but figure that's just inviting trouble.
 
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