Google, especially Google Corp, is very much that way too. One of my users is currently getting a fair bit of spam because a spammer figured out that if they send a message with envelope sender @google.com, rcpt @gmail.com, google.com MX will accept it, then bounce it with NoSuchUser and gmail will accept it. I spent an hour yesterday looking for a way to contact Google about it, but couldn't find anything. Made harder because most things assume you are talking about gmail or youtube, not google.com itself.
It's pretty shameful that these large companies have no real way to contact them.
pricechild · 1m ago
I've been receiving this also. Rather annoying!!
I wonder if abuse@ or postmaster@ would be able to help... /s
Sleaker · 9m ago
I saw these spam mails start showing up a few months ago, and I was like WOW how is google infra just letting nefarious actors use their own domain to bounce spam/fishing emails?
hollow-moe · 35m ago
This has been going for months already, it will most likely never be fixed.
throw-the-towel · 5m ago
s/months/years
Benlights · 46m ago
I've been having the same issue
_-_-__-_-_- · 45m ago
I lost my facebook account about five years ago--total outright account ban. No recourse at all. It happened to a group of about 10 people that had been administrators of a local non-profit's facebook page and who had managed groups for the organization in the past. Our non-profit was non-denominational and helped local teens with after school type programs. We never knew why our personal accounts were banned. Best we could figure was that we used a tagline in the past in some facebook comments and posts that later got co-opted and spread by a "white power" group in the USA. We were located in Canada.
At the time, some people recommended buying an Occulus device and calling their support because they were able to recover accounts and they had human support. We tried appealing to the company on social media, but we didn't have any luck.
I had to rebuild my social media profile and our organizations profiles and I lost 14 years of Messenger conversations, posts, and photos. These memories were just gone. It sucked. For the non-profit, it meant lost donations and lost connections for our alumni. Keep your own content off-platform.
ToucanLoucan · 36m ago
I registered an instagram account to share my art, and was banned entirely, immediately, before I could even upload an avatar, with zero explanation. I emailed several times, did the license scan thing, and even messaged support from my personal account, and I still have never gotten any sort of explanation.
shrug This and that other thread today about Slack just seems to be what happens when you're determined to remove as many humans from your processes as possible.
diebeforei485 · 1h ago
It's important to have your own website, so you can post updates there. Use Meta to let people know that there is an update on the site.
dylan604 · 1h ago
Having your own site on someone else's corporate service is no less of a risk of being shut out of your account. Free speech is only as free as the service you are using thinks it is.
Zak · 54m ago
Web hosting is, or can be a commodity. An organization that gets dropped by its web host can just get another.
bestouff · 46m ago
Sure, but as long as you own you domain name you're a DNS update away of moving it elsewhere.
bigbadfeline · 19m ago
There's risk and then there's RISK. A corporate service in the form of a simple VPS is cheap and can be had from a 1000 providers anywhere in the world. Very simple to change providers too. Nothing like the quasi-monopoly of FB/X/YT.
stronglikedan · 30m ago
I think there's only that risk if you're using a website building service like Wix. If you build your own site and then send it up to a dumb host, you can just send it up to another dumb host when the first one pisses you off. Hopefully, you're at least managing your own DNS records too, and like that service.
andyjohnson0 · 18m ago
If you have your own§ domain and are reasonably diligent in keeping a local backup of your site then it is trivial to move the site to a new host. As others have aaid, web hosting is a commodity business.
§ yes, I know...
CM30 · 49m ago
100%. These large social media companies are very capricious about what counts as breaking their rules, will kill your reach at the drop of a hat and will fold under the slightest bit of pressure from someone richer/better connected than you if the latter has any issue with your work or existence at all.
Gotta own your own platform to make sure you have a backup when that happens, and have at least some control over your own audience.
electric_muse · 1h ago
Content is one thing. But it gets me really concerned about these kind of appeal processes when it comes to more critical things like your identity or proof of personhood.
It is not hard to imagine getting a black mark in some invisible proprietary profile that determines if you can access Uber Eats, LinkedIn, etc. and have no recourse to fix it or get another chance.
throwawaysleep · 1h ago
You don’t need to imagine. It happens frequently.
ceejayoz · 54m ago
And not just for stuff like Uber.
You can get locked out of the IRS, Social Security, etc. in the same way.
I'm thinking of people who bought an Occulus Rift, which Meta then purchased and then forced people to associate a facebook account with it which they could then ban causing you to lose access to the hardware (and any games you purchased). A strong incentive to use the facebook account as little as possible since making a throwaway facebook account is now such a PITA. Infuriating since it was a bait and switch on an expensive piece of hardware. I guess the only winning move was to sell the device to some other sucker the moment the facebook purchase of Occulus was announced.
Don't worry this requirement was removed. Now you just need a Meta account which is totally different!
pavlov · 7m ago
The Facebook acquisition of Oculus was in March 2014. The hardware that Oculus sold before that was a developer prototype.
There was no bait and switch because there was no consumer product.
There’s a lot to dislike about Meta, but this complaint doesn’t make sense. If anything, Meta has put millions more of VR devices into consumers’ hands by selling the Quest at a loss. Nobody has to buy it.
dev_l1x_be · 1h ago
Not opening a Facebook account for your organization is how you can avoid these.
fajmccain · 1h ago
Great article. Another problem
with Meta’s moderation on political topics is they block content worldwide rather than in the united states only
mschuster91 · 1h ago
It's not just Meta. All big tech companies (including Amazon, if you are a vendor) have gotten infamous for basically only getting a human to intervene with automated moderation or outsourced lowest-effort moderation if one raises a big-enough stink on social media or manages to secure a court judgement, but even that isn't foolproof these days. Twitter has recently gotten under fire for ignoring German court orders.
CM30 · 53m ago
Yep. It's why the only way most people get their hacked YouTube channels back is by begging the Team YouTube account on Twitter for help, and hoping enough people bother the staff there that something actually gets fixed.
If you're a popular creator that doesn't have much of a social media following, friends at Google or lots of lawyer money, RIP any chance of getting your channel back before/after it gets banned due to the hackers.
It's pretty shameful that these large companies have no real way to contact them.
At the time, some people recommended buying an Occulus device and calling their support because they were able to recover accounts and they had human support. We tried appealing to the company on social media, but we didn't have any luck.
I had to rebuild my social media profile and our organizations profiles and I lost 14 years of Messenger conversations, posts, and photos. These memories were just gone. It sucked. For the non-profit, it meant lost donations and lost connections for our alumni. Keep your own content off-platform.
shrug This and that other thread today about Slack just seems to be what happens when you're determined to remove as many humans from your processes as possible.
§ yes, I know...
Gotta own your own platform to make sure you have a backup when that happens, and have at least some control over your own audience.
It is not hard to imagine getting a black mark in some invisible proprietary profile that determines if you can access Uber Eats, LinkedIn, etc. and have no recourse to fix it or get another chance.
You can get locked out of the IRS, Social Security, etc. in the same way.
https://www.id.me/government
Don't worry this requirement was removed. Now you just need a Meta account which is totally different!
There was no bait and switch because there was no consumer product.
There’s a lot to dislike about Meta, but this complaint doesn’t make sense. If anything, Meta has put millions more of VR devices into consumers’ hands by selling the Quest at a loss. Nobody has to buy it.
If you're a popular creator that doesn't have much of a social media following, friends at Google or lots of lawyer money, RIP any chance of getting your channel back before/after it gets banned due to the hackers.