What Losing My Facebook Account Taught Me About Voiceover

What losing my Facebook account taught me about voiceover:

Nothing.

It just reinforced that if a company is big enough it can arbitrarily create and enforce rules regardless of their fairness.

Some back story:

A little over a month ago, I received a notification that someone was trying to access my Facebook account. I had left my phone at home and was at my son’s high school for the opening night of the spring musical, the virtually unheard of and rarely performed “The Rink.” So, I didn’t see the message for a few hours. By the time I did and clicked that I did not authorize access, my account had been hijacked, tied to an Instagram account that isn’t mine and suspended for reasons that Meta will not divulge due to privacy concerns, but apparently have to do with activity on the offending the Instagram account. Huh?

Here's where things get absurd:

In order to appeal the decision, I would have to log in to the offending Instagram account that is, again, NOT MINE. Not the Instagram account that had been tied to my Facebook account for the previous four years. And not my Facebook account.

I cannot appeal through Facebook, but could theoretically report a “compromised account,” which brings me to a form giving me a message that I can’t proceed because I’m using the form too quickly. Huh?

There’s no one to contact and apparently no way to rectify the situation.

As far as Meta is concerned, I am the person who did the thing they won’t tell me I did. Even though there is likely a mountain of evidence that my account was compromised. But Meta doesn’t care about that because they don’t have to.

As far as I’m concerned, I’m only missing out on personal updates from the few people who still use it for personal updates. And those people know how to reach me if needed. And for those who don’t have my contact info, I have a website with my email and phone number.

Here’s what I’m not missing out on: bad jokes; outdated missing person reports; “share if you agree” memes; the latest in conspiracy theories; quotes taken out of context and shared because they “seem” true; notices every time a former high school classmate has passed away; ads targeted to people who want to get into VO; ads targeting scam closeout deals; wasted time; and a Facebook business page that does not drive client engagement or revenue. In short, a lot of shallow thinking and rage baiting.

Side note, a great deep dive into how social media companies manipulate user emotions in order to get them to spend more time on their sites is The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World by Max Fisher. After reading it I stopped using Facebook as much and stopped using Twitter altogether.