“You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone” ~Joni Mitchell
You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone…
Earlier this month my personal Facebook page was hacked. This wasn’t just one of those “don’t open a message from me!” things…in the space of 14 minutes someone gained access, tried uploading videos that went against all social media guidelines and Facebook, rightly so, shut down my account, pending “review”. While I could probably live without my personal Facebook page it also meant I was cut off from my farm business page (and my personal Instagram page that I would really, really, really like back please!!). I had done something right early on in the life of the farm’s page though and assigned a couple of administrators to it so at least, third hand, I’ve been able to get pictures and information out but I’m sure that’s wearing thin on them and is frustrating for me!
So what happens next? Who knows….frustratingly, Facebook seems to have no way to contact them to discuss the situation. I cannot access anything at all for support on the page, unable to get past the “your post violates…” page, though I did get a notification on it that my page is being looked at to see if it can be restored and told it can take 30 days, or never. I’ve read horror stories of personal pages, that have no controversial content, being permanently banned with no recourse for the creator, and there seems to be no way of actually talking to a human at one of the biggest tech companies in the world.
If I am banned does that mean the business page I created disappears too? Can I start from scratch or is my IP address added to some “nope…this site’s not for you” database? So many questions…. I do think I’ve discovered the motivation for the hacking though. I am now getting emails about a Facebook “ad” I supposedly created at 2 am, in what I assume is an Arabic language, and sending me bills in bitcoin. Sigh…..
And so the creation of this webpage, as rough and clunky as it may be. One of the things I read during this mess was “you don’t actually own your social media”. How true.