A couple of weeks ago, I made my daily visit to my Facebook account so I could see what my friends have been up to. Some of them are on vacations and I've been following their fun. Some of my friends have been making comments about how their jobs are going and others have been showing pictures of their spouse, their children and grandchildren. Some of them have been commenting on politics and the many changes that have been happening since January 20, 2025. My daughter and wife have been making final plans for my daughter's imminent wedding to her wonderful fiance. Some people have been commenting about the different animals they are seeing in their yard due to the change of seasons. But I saw none of that. This is what I saw:
Your Facebook account has been suspended. This is because your account, or activity on it, doesn't follow our Community Standards on account integrity.
If you think we suspended your account by mistake, you have 180 days to appeal our decision. If you miss this deadline your account will be permanently disabled
This was followed by a button labeled Appeal. But when I click that I get this page:
Well, I don't have a video selfie to show them. But what they really want is for me to turn on my camera so they can record my Face (this is Facebook after all) and they will tell me to move my Face so they can look at my Face from different angles to make sure I'm a real person. The first problem is that I don't have a camera on my computer. And I don't use Facebook on my phone (which DOES have a camera of course). When I go to the page that wants to record my Face, it says that, since it can't detect a camera on my computer, maybe I could borrow a camera or device with a camera. No I can't. Or maybe the real answer is that I won't.
For one thing, Facebook doesn't have a saved video selfie of me to compare with this new one because, well, we've already been through that. I've never made a video selfie for Facebook before. So, what good will this video selfie do? Another problem is that I don't want Facebook to have a video selfie of me because who knows what they will do with it? I've seen all the reports about what Artificial Intelligence can do with videos, voice recordings and pictures and I don't want my video selfie to turn up somewhere with my face being used to sell a brand of toilet paper or have my Face show up on someone else's naked body. Also, if they are worried that I am not a real person, how are they so naive to think that artificial intelligence couldn't be used to make a convincing video selfie so it can continue to use my Facebook account while ignoring their Community Standards on account integrity.?
So, in less than 180 days, I will no longer have a Facebook page to waste my time on. I'm sorry to all my friends who will not be seeing posts and comments from me and wonder why I don't seem to be interested in their posts. They will think that I think I am too good for them. Or they may think that I'm on vacation but how could that happen and I am not posting vacation pictures to Facebook? Or they will think that I am hiding from the madman I cut off in traffic or I've died. Isn't that a shame - I didn't even know he was sick. All thanks to Facebook who said if I would just sign up with them and watch their ads, I could keep in touch with all my friends. And now I can't. There is no phone number to call. There is no email account to write to (well, there is an email account I did write to but the inbox is full because no one reads it).
I wish I had asked my Facebook friends for their mailing address so I could write them a letter explaining what has happened. But I would probably be laughed at because that is so out-of-date. Only old fuddie duddies do that. And anyway, why would I ask for anyone's mailing address? This is the 21st Century and nobody write letters anymore. Everyone just uses Facebook and that will last forever
I guess I'll just have to spend more time writing on this blog which hardly anyone reads. But at least I can keep busy doing it.
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