We do not live on a planet where Facebook noticed this person because of his advocacy of 'decentralized social networks'

In fact, the reason I hate Facebook and social media so much is that they enable patently stupid theories like this to gain traction.

Why not? I remember long time ago they blocked and de-ranked posts with urls to competitive products.

And I don't see anything illegal here. Facebook.com is a private website of Mark and stakeholders, they can do whatever they want on their territory (if it's legal). As much as you can do on your backyard.

Ethics is a different topic, but it's perfectly legal.

I agree, although there's another side to "patently stupid ideas", which is that outlandish (yet true) happenings are minimized.

Like if someone said "facebook tracks you everywhere you go" or "your phone is listening to you" or "your television watches everything you watch" it would be shrugged off.

If Facebook provided an explanation, the individual affected might be less prone to speculation.

Similar with job interviews these days. We decided not to move forward, but we can't provide any feedback or tell you why.

Looking forward to the day that Google, FB and Twitter are classified as public-utilities

It sounds like the people are the problem, not the platform. If anything things could be much worse without the moderation that does take place, and security.

Before people jump to conclusions, does anybody really believe decentralized social networks pose any significant threat to Facebook's market share?

no obviously not. User was probably banned for another reason or in error.

I mean do people seriously believe Sheryl Sandberg is sitting somewhere banning Lincoln from Utah with a thousand followers so that he can't spread the gospel of Mastodon

If Sheryl Sandberg is the name of a program scanning messages for references to Mastodon (or decentralization, or whatever) and banning accounts promoting it, then yes apparently some people do believe that. It's not like some inconceivable idea. Or perhaps it just bans accounts "promoting" anything without paying for the privilege.

There are various groups, pages and posts related to Mastodon, Diaspora and the Fediverse. I don't think there is an algorithm proactively banning people for promoting it.

I don't think so either, although I wouldn't reject the possibility that those topics have some weight in the algorithm, whether intentionally or thanks to statistics. I do reject the absurd and dismissive "do people seriously believe Sheryl Sandberg is sitting somewhere banning..." mischaracterization of the argument.

If anything I wouldn't be surprised to hear Facebook funding them. Can't be a monopoly if you've got a "competitor"

Like how Google gave duck.com to DuckDuckGo and funds Mozilla

I do, and am working on it, not to profit... just to route around the damage to the internet it causes.

Without more information about what policy was being violated, it smells like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc

Well, I have a lighter but somewhat similar story. I deactivated my FB account a good 4-ish months ago. I went back to change my name (to indicate for folks where to find me) 2 weeks ago and I was greeted with a message that I cannot post or comment for 60 days because one of my posts (they showed which) is against community guidelines. I posted that a long time ago (8+ months) and it was fine until it apparently wasn't. The post was a single image, this one: https://imgur.com/a/BqgX28c

And they weren't too specific about 'which policy' - just pointed me here: https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards/

Without specifics, Facebook has basically given the suspended person freedom to choose whatever reason they want. This is fair.

If Facebook doesn’t like this explanation and it circulates to millions of people, they are free to offer a competing explanation.

Arguing an unproven point isn’t a problem here, it’s a strategy, and it’s a good one.

A good guess for the actual reason would perhaps be that someone who posts lots of links runs a risk of posting ones found in a blacklist. That blacklist probably doesn’t deliberately contain “competing social networks” though, but could contain such links in error, indicated as phishing or malware.

Most likely.

However, given the strength of Facebook's monopoly, they have the power of a state over people's lives (e.g. via a livelihood that depends on a Facebook account).

The lack of due process (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Due_process) is very worrying.

The Magna Carta says "No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land."

This feels like a breach of that, even though it is a monopoly corporation, instead of a state.

It’s still facebooks fault for not providing a real reason. They should show the reason a user got banned and not just a vague “rules violation”.

I’ve seen Facebook and Instagram ban accounts that have neutral content, have never posted about violence or posted lies (luxuries that Facebook offers to politicians) and have not threatened or trolled or spammed others. In all the cases I’ve seen, there has been no recourse available to get the account back. The person hits a few walls of boilerplate responses and gives up.

In some cases, like this one, Facebook or Instagram will ask for identity proof, and once collected, will still send boilerplate responses that the account can’t be activated. It’s not surprising that Facebook collected his ID and still refused to help.

As for Facebook engineers solving complex problems with machine learning, I don’t see evidence of that. If anything, Facebook has huge disconnected code bases filled with bugs and biases that nobody can understand or do anything about.

This is good riddance in a way. That Facebook and Instagram are removing users who may have stayed as decent people bringing others to engage on these platforms is a net positive to society.

and we are learning about this on twitter. hope they let it slide...

https://redecentralize.org/

Is having a Facebook account randomly banned common these days? Does anyone measure this?

The consequences are quite scary, and we have no means to recover from it - control is from remote people in another country, with no means of complaint.

If we're going to have monopoly social networks, we at least need regulation imposing the extensive cost on them of manual vetting with judicial review for cases like this.

Fortunately he can now appeal to the oversight board. I look forward to reading their decision.

Poor grammar in this title. Reads like Facebook advocates for decentralized social networks. Replace “it” with “user”.

Powers to be feel threatened by decentralized social networks. Even though it is already out and growing.

The irony of this being posted on Twitter really takes away from the message they're trying to communicate.

Twitter and Facebook have radically different leadership, and therefore they do not take the same approach. In a related note, Twitter is actively developing and promoting decentralized social mediums and decentralized protocols.

If they were truly honest about that they would work with the groups already doing it. Instead, it's mentioned by them whenever the criticism of their walled garden becomes too intense, and then promptly ignored again.

They are working with them. Bluesky just did a report on the decentralized web: https://twitter.com/bluesky/status/1352302821140549632

Don’t get your hopes up wrt bluesky. It’s vaporware