The whole article doesn't even contain the word 'AI' or 'LLM." There is zero explanation about why they think it's caused by an AI Meta deployed recently. The clickbait game is crazy.
> We manage millions of dollars in annual Meta ad spend.
Oh nvm. They're full-time clickbaiters... what else did I expect.
> They set up a dedicated work account, which, by the way, is standard professional practice
Standard professional practice invented by ad agencies themselves, against Facebook's policy[0].
No serious company wants their key users to log into a platform with their personal accounts, this would be a security nightmare and asking for trouble
I wonder how exactly is social media managed at larger companies. I never found an enterprise type login for Facebook, and the only way to log in is by first creating a personal account?
Set up a business page from a personal account. That has always been Facebook's stance on this issue. Like, for a decade or more.
And before someone says "it's a bad policy..." yeah it is. But I don't think one gets to complain about how AI ruined their business when the whole business practice is built upon violating their platform's policy.
>We have contacted Meta support dozens of times over the past 30 days. Each representative confirmed that account creation and monitoring are now handled almost entirely by AI. Despite successfully completing required face verifications, our accounts continue to be flagged and banned by automated parameters. There is currently no path for manual intervention; even internal support tickets are failing to reach human reviewers with the authority to resolve these systemic blocks.
>Oh nvm. They're full-time clickbaiters... what else did I expect.
There is nothing clickbait about this article. I fail to understand why take such a hostile approach to something on the internet where you completely miss the point under contention - auto account bans via AI
Ad industry is one of the most vile things on the internet. You won't find any sympathy here. You might have been blisfully unaware that you are hated in the nation until now, but noone is wishing you well. Even though the problem you rise is legitimate and interesting the internet couldn't have asked for a more deserving entity to have it.
I think most big tech companies are like this and it's just going to get worse as AI adoption increases internally.
2 days ago I tried to create new gmail account and Google insisted that my phone number was used too many times. Fine, I'll pay for a new workspace account... Submit my billing information, that same that I use on other accounts but now there is an extra validation step that requires my ID and copies of my bank statement. Wasn't happy about that but tried it anyway. They expected my entire checking account number to appear on my bank statement. My bank account number is for my entire account and not just the checking portion but even if they were the same my bank redacts parts of the number so that if anyone gets my statement they can't just start drafting money.
The additional information section where I explain things is obviously ignored because the auto generated responses are sent pretty fast.
I can't decide what the saddest part is, the fact that their "give us a moment" emails that are send immediately after submitting still say they need extra time to process the request due to limited staffing because of covid or the fact that Gemini was brutal in criticizing them when I asked if it was normal to expect complete account numbers on the statement.
Similar to OP, the embedded help chat got in a loop of telling me I needed to speak to a rep to fix the issue and when attempting to connect me it would deny the request because I wasn't a paying customer yet.
> I think most big tech companies are like this and it's just going to get worse as AI adoption increases internally.
Welcome to UB, at scale, in every language.
Everyone loves to complain about C (and C++) UB; well, now, you have that in every language.
We're at the point now that my manually written (non-trivial) projects C hits fewer undefined behaviour than even trivial projects constructed with an LLM and human "review".
The arch nemesis of software engineering. The exceptionally exceptional exception. It doesn’t throw, it glides. It festers. It waits until production day. It rears its head from the dead. The demon with 1000 names…
The sad part is that you gave your information and kept trying to give them money despite all of this hassle? What is exactly you are looking for? If it's email, there is tons of providers out there who will be happy to take your money.
the only thing I can think that would make it imperative that you get a gmail instead of other email provider is that google provides the ecosystem of apps and google apps script to automate them, if you have built up a lot of tooling for automating things it can be a pretty sweet platform to do things in.
That's bad for you don't have the account yet but at Google, once you're a paying customer --and hence you're not the product anymore--, there are actual people helping you on the phone when you call them. Of course the catch-22 here is that you don't have the Workspace account yet, so you may sorry out of luck.
I've ran into this even in my limited advertising on meta - they actaully want you to use the actual individual's facebook account to manage the ads accounts, even on behalf of the clients through the agency.
This is kind of insane behavior but when you remember that google actually supports enterprise domains and SSO and facebook has very little of that - or relatively little - it makes sense. If you are personally banned from facebook for whatever reason, you cannot have a business account under another email - once you validate your identity it regurgitates the ban.
Despite this being an obvious antipattern to security it is very much by design for meta.
Yeah, Meta wants you to have a single Facebook account under your legal name that you use for all your personal and professional contact with them. Never mind if you’re freelancing for three companies that don’t want to be linked to each other and running the page for your church and your karate studio.
So of course people try to set up multiple accounts, but anyone over a certain age setting up a new account is naturally flagged as suspicious. The solution is just to allow a type of accounts that only manage business pages, but that would probably mess up their stats.
I ran into the same thing, I deleted my Facebook account years ago, needed a business account to run ads, signed up and instantly banned when I wasn't even banned when was originally a Facebook user, guess it's punishment for my desertion.
I’ve been trying to sell my old iPhone and AirPods on Facebook Marketplace. Since I wanted them gone quickly, I priced them a bit lower than similar listings but Facebook instantly flagged them as “counterfeit.”
I thought maybe the issue was my photos, so I relisted with clearer pictures… same result. Every appeal just gets an automated rejection with no real explanation.
Now I’m getting warnings that I’m “at risk of losing access to Marketplace.”
It honestly feels like their AI is using a hard, oversimplified rule: “iPhone 8 listed for $80? Must be counterfeit.”
Man, fuck Facebook Marketplace. I cannot figure out for the life of me why everyone decided to abandon the perfectly useable Craigslist for that unreliable, buggy, scam-laden pile of hot garbage. Never once have I had a single good experience with Facebook Marketplace.
I really tried my best to open a Facebook account, so I could open a developer account. All correct and real info. Instaban immediately after account creation, immediate "go away forever" email after clicking the "appeal" button.
The fact that you have to open a personal account first, in order to start a developer account seems mad to me. I have no interest at all in having a personal Facebook account.
The same thing is happening to end users, the consumers that they maybe want seeing those ads. Random, totally out of the blue bans on Meta platforms for no rhyme or reason. It's all over reddit:
It has been happening in other platforms too. I had a tough time creating a new LinkedIn account after deleting mine around 10 years ago. At one point one day in the new account I got banned, then I submitted my ID and got in only to be banned again within the same timespan. All the same accusations that the profile information I submitted was not “correct”, translation: I was not me according to someone else’s idea of what being me is, even though I was able to show them a proper ID.
I only got it working stable after finding an obscure email on Reddit and re-sending my ID to a completely different confirmation system.
I wasn't going to send my driver's license to some overseas contractor... I eventually hunted down a form for submitting a notarized statement proving who I was. It's more than a bit ridiculous.
I wonder if they ever had enough of the California Attorney General on them (after people posted guides on how to seek resolution through that channel)
btw saw recommendations to use a VPN to be able to use the complaint form… overall, wonder how much Meta cost taxpayers there (maybe they make up for it?)
In general, its really stunning that Meta stock price grew that much since 2012 - when they IPO'd in 2012, I thought i will be a "cheap stock" around 50 - 70 USD.
nice username... I was going to say, we warned about this with the google+ real name policy "nymwars" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymwars and the cloudflare AI bot blocking that blocks humans
Yes it's potentially good for reducing spam and terribly good for collecting personal information for advertisers. Both at the expense of making social networks inaccessible to real people.
I don't think this is an AI issue. It is about the terms of use: they don't allow a second account, even if it's intended for ad management. The recommended way is to use Meta Business Manager via the existing account.
This article is LLM generated, has the typical structure, that I’m tired of reading by now. They Always write using this rhythm, repeating 3 times a list of dramatic stuff “every this, every that”.
or it has the typical structure because that is what content providers made their workers provide over the last decade due to engagement stats showing that got the most users clicking, responding, subscribing, and that is what the LLM was trained on.
I would but Google charge me $5 a click and nobody will engage with my Reddit ads (not even an ASCII dong in the open comments anymore) and zero conversions.
If anyone wonders how AI might end up undermining humanity, this is a small preview. We're gradually handing over more processes to automation (YOLO, right?) while the systems themselves remain fundamentally "non empathetic". Maybe this specific case comes down to a poorly designed prompt from 2024... but so far the trend isn't "friendlier" automation, everyone is after more powerful automation...
I tried signing up for Instagram once because for some reason there are a lot small businesses in artsy spaces (jewelry, etc.) who basically make it the main way to interact with them (or did) and I got banned almost instantly for no reason I could discern. Kind of gave up at that point (well, after trying to go through their "show an ID process" and it not working) and if I want to see some artist's insta I ask my wife. Don't care that much about the agency stuff, but their account management situation is indeed totally broken.
I can confirm this is real! Last week I tried to register a Facebook ads account, I got instantly banned for violating TOS ... Like 2 minutes after registration
> Sounds reasonable, until you realise that the appeal tool is inside the platform – the same platform the specialist is completely locked out of. You cannot appeal a login ban from behind a login screen.
I'm curious whether anybody but wunderkind, we-want-bubble-2.0-after-the-first-one-crashed hype speculation Zuckerberg could have gotten away with theytrustmedumbfucks. Maybe he'd be "making an insightful commentary on human nature" if it wasn't for verified stories to back up his general character like hacking the Crimson reporters
The site has been awful for years and years. That he's shoving AI down throats is the same confirmation we always had: he doesn't care about you (but this was obvious from Graph Search)
The users with their account issues are such a DRAG! How can a poor trillion dollar company be expected to be able to manage this situation? Worst case scenario is they'd have to gasp hire humans to resolve issues.
/s
Same thing happened to me on discord. Created new account and before first login it was already banned. Yay.
> We manage millions of dollars in annual Meta ad spend.
Oh nvm. They're full-time clickbaiters... what else did I expect.
> They set up a dedicated work account, which, by the way, is standard professional practice
Standard professional practice invented by ad agencies themselves, against Facebook's policy[0].
[0]: https://www.facebook.com/help/975828035803295/
> It's against our Community Standards to maintain more than one personal account.
> Bear in mind that a personal profile is for non-commercial use and represents an individual person.
Really unclear to me what a business is supposed to do. Not a particularly useful link.
And before someone says "it's a bad policy..." yeah it is. But I don't think one gets to complain about how AI ruined their business when the whole business practice is built upon violating their platform's policy.
>Oh nvm. They're full-time clickbaiters... what else did I expect.
There is nothing clickbait about this article. I fail to understand why take such a hostile approach to something on the internet where you completely miss the point under contention - auto account bans via AI
>We manage millions of dollars in annual Meta ad spend.
So AI is doing something good for once :)
2 days ago I tried to create new gmail account and Google insisted that my phone number was used too many times. Fine, I'll pay for a new workspace account... Submit my billing information, that same that I use on other accounts but now there is an extra validation step that requires my ID and copies of my bank statement. Wasn't happy about that but tried it anyway. They expected my entire checking account number to appear on my bank statement. My bank account number is for my entire account and not just the checking portion but even if they were the same my bank redacts parts of the number so that if anyone gets my statement they can't just start drafting money.
The additional information section where I explain things is obviously ignored because the auto generated responses are sent pretty fast.
I can't decide what the saddest part is, the fact that their "give us a moment" emails that are send immediately after submitting still say they need extra time to process the request due to limited staffing because of covid or the fact that Gemini was brutal in criticizing them when I asked if it was normal to expect complete account numbers on the statement.
Similar to OP, the embedded help chat got in a loop of telling me I needed to speak to a rep to fix the issue and when attempting to connect me it would deny the request because I wasn't a paying customer yet.
Welcome to UB, at scale, in every language.
Everyone loves to complain about C (and C++) UB; well, now, you have that in every language.
We're at the point now that my manually written (non-trivial) projects C hits fewer undefined behaviour than even trivial projects constructed with an LLM and human "review".
(I even wrote a blog post about it!)
It used to be that if I pay I am ok, now if I pay you go to jail. so you better make sure i'm not the wrong type of guy to accept money from
That's bad for you don't have the account yet but at Google, once you're a paying customer --and hence you're not the product anymore--, there are actual people helping you on the phone when you call them. Of course the catch-22 here is that you don't have the Workspace account yet, so you may sorry out of luck.
This is kind of insane behavior but when you remember that google actually supports enterprise domains and SSO and facebook has very little of that - or relatively little - it makes sense. If you are personally banned from facebook for whatever reason, you cannot have a business account under another email - once you validate your identity it regurgitates the ban.
Despite this being an obvious antipattern to security it is very much by design for meta.
So of course people try to set up multiple accounts, but anyone over a certain age setting up a new account is naturally flagged as suspicious. The solution is just to allow a type of accounts that only manage business pages, but that would probably mess up their stats.
It honestly feels like their AI is using a hard, oversimplified rule: “iPhone 8 listed for $80? Must be counterfeit.”
The fact that you have to open a personal account first, in order to start a developer account seems mad to me. I have no interest at all in having a personal Facebook account.
r/facebookdisabledme
r/FixMyInstagram
r/InstagramDisabledBans
r/MetaLawsuits
I only got it working stable after finding an obscure email on Reddit and re-sending my ID to a completely different confirmation system.
btw saw recommendations to use a VPN to be able to use the complaint form… overall, wonder how much Meta cost taxpayers there (maybe they make up for it?)
In general, its really stunning that Meta stock price grew that much since 2012 - when they IPO'd in 2012, I thought i will be a "cheap stock" around 50 - 70 USD.
Yes it's potentially good for reducing spam and terribly good for collecting personal information for advertisers. Both at the expense of making social networks inaccessible to real people.
The reason why they need agencies to deploy ads is thats its not their core business - so they wont be able to setup Meta ads on their own?
I tried three times of getting insta-banned before getting advised here to do the same.
On my one day old account that had never done a transaction???
But really. Facebook doesn't care. They've got their eyes on your clients and want to cut you out using AI tools that are easy to use.
That's hilarious. Exactly how Bluesky operates.
Tech today is treated like some drunken first year collage fratboy a sex doll.
It fails. Every. Time.
Then we get popcorn time.
its all a black box mystery. I guess we have to sue them and then compel them to give reasons and unban them
The site has been awful for years and years. That he's shoving AI down throats is the same confirmation we always had: he doesn't care about you (but this was obvious from Graph Search)
/s
Same thing happened to me on discord. Created new account and before first login it was already banned. Yay.