How should Facebook change its account disabling policy?

And a note should be posted to the disabled user's account notifying their Facebook friends of some kind of status so they don't just think the person disappeared off the face of the earth or, worse yet, unfriended them.

Your #1 idea is brilliant!

Another thing they could do, is stop writing in the auto response that they'll respond "as soon as possible" as that is a blatant lie.

yeah .. i do agree with that ..
this is the best diea .. .

today my facebook account has been Disabled , i was really shoked when i found that . and i couldn't bileave ma self cause i really didnt do anything wrong .i dont know what happn just pooffffff without any warnings . i did a google search and i have found out that lots of ppl are having my same problem /

anyways i just send them 2 Emails 1 min ago .. still dont know what they will do .
but if they really deleted my account forever , i wont sing up for a new account and start all over again . .
am really soo much pissed and i feel abused .

hello every body
i am one from those people who have been jugged from the facebook that are not not suitable to be in the facebook any more ...for what reasons ?????? no body know . who know?????!!!!!?????
without them ( the developer ) there will be no face book
without us ( the peoples in the facebook) the will be no face book too
so we are important as them
so they have to shoe some respect and allow us to participate in the decisions regarding our face book .
they disabled my account . i emailed them but till now i didn't get an answer
from them . why they have to answer me , i am no body for them just a guy
his account have been disabled , they still have a millions of users so finally i am anomber for them not more , they are a overweening peoples managing a successful company,,,what do we expecting from such guys
note : they didn't notify me or i didn't do any thing could bother them

Hi everybody!
It's now the third time that I've been blocked from adding new friends so I decided to disable my account myself and sent this email to the facebook administration:

Hi!
I'm writing to ask you why you constantly block me from adding new friends. It's now the 3rd time that I've been blocked. Do you really think that I'm a spammer? You probably already have my bank account number in your files and perhaps my credit card numbers as well. What do you want me to do? Send you my passport via air mail or what? I'd like to know how some girls can get up to 4,000 or 5,000 friends without being blocked??? I've got ONLY 200 friends and I've been blocked 3 times already! I can tell you that every time it happens to me, it's like receiving a slap in the face and it's not something that is too pleasant. I've already deactivated my account until I hear from you and then I'll decide afterwards if I reactivate it. Let me end by giving you a suggestion. It would be a good idea to find another way to control your members than constantly blocking them the way you do. This way, you would avoid loosing players in your ball game.

Best Regards
Richard Hamel

From what I just read up here, I doubt that I would get any reply any soon from them, but since we're all a part of the reason why they are so successful, they should have more consideration for members who bring billions of US dollars in their bank account. I prefer being the one who disconnects the plug, than facing the humiliation of having the plug disconnected by those people who treat their members like nobodies. It seems like on this great World Wide Web they're are some companies that would do anything they can to keep you as a subscriber, and others that would do anything to kick you out. Facebook undoubtably falls in the second category to me and I don't think that THEY deserve MY subscription...period.

hello every body

ii THINK THIS BEHAVIOR IS NOT FROM MORAL TO DISABLE AN ACCOUNT SUDDENLY,
AND WITH A PROUD VOICE ,(We will not be able to reactivate your account for any reason. This decision is final.) . I NEED MY ACCOUNT TO BE REACTIVATED ,, they HAVE AT LEAST TO GIVE THE USERS THAT THEY DECIDED TO TERMINATE THEIR ACCOUNT , A 3 DAYES OR WHAT EVER IF THEY WANT TO USE THERE ACCOUNT FOR THE LAST TIME , BUT THEY JUST TERMINATE OUR ACCOUNT,,,THEY ARE EMBARRASSING ME WITH MY FRIENDS , HOW MY FRIENDS WILL THINK ,THAT I JUST REMOVED THEM FROM MY FRIENDS LIST OR WHAT . I THINK THIS IS A VIOLATION FOR THE USER HIM SELF AND EMBARRASSMENT , THEY CANT JUST TACK A DECISION LIKE THAT,,
KILLING PEOPLE EVEN NOT JUDGED BY THAT WAY ( BY JUST A FINAL JUDGMENT WITHOUT A DISCUSSANT )
THEY DECIDED THAT I HARASS USERS ,HOW DID THEY KNOW DID MY FRIENDS COMPLAIN FOR THEM FROM ME , OR WHAT ????? ASK MY FRIENDS IF THEY WANT MY ACCOUNT TO BE DISABLED . I FEEL LIKE I AM DEALING WITH A MACHINE NOT HUMANS , AND THERE REPLAY LOOK LIKE AN AUTOMATIC REPLY

WHAT WAS THE PROBLEM ?????? I ADDED TOO MANY FRIENDS,
WHY NOT, IF I KNOW MOST OF THEM AND I DIDNT DO ANY THING COULD MAKE THEM UPSET ., THEY HAVE TO REVISE THEIR POLICY , .

my account was disabled, and all i did was take part in one of their applications. which is ironic as they provide the application which requires us to add many friends, which i did (i added 20 friends in 1 hour) and they disabled me thinking i was a spammer.
this i blame fully on facebook. why allow an application to be installed by your users only to disable ppl for using it?
weird!
i am frustrated and i dont think its fair as i was using a FB application . If tht application was going to create problems, then dont let us download it!

I'm in the same boat with facebook disabling my account. From what I've read it looks like the most common reason they give users for disabling their account is because of harassing other users or adding too many friends. I've been using facebook for 3 years and all of the sudden they accuse me of uploading sexual and explicit content. You can't run a site whose main purpose is to allow us to add friends as well as new friends and when we add too many consider us spam.

The solution is simple. Either get people to put in their credit details and they take a 1 or a dollar to make sure that its a legit number. This would be a small price to pay. A lot of sites do this to stop spammers and robots from using sites. It would be hard for a spammer to generate fake credit card numbers especially if real money was taken out of the account. If no credit card then a phone number. Yes I know this would be tedious. But a representative could require you to phone them up and they would give you a pin number. Also for god sake more advertising means more money means better servers. The reason they are doing this is the lack of bandwidth on the site. They are getting tough for that reason. Steve

I find there approach to be stupid. Bebo doesn't appear to have the same approach and it does appear to have the same applications that work with it. In fact Bebo is very similar. I think just move to Bebo. I had my account disabled the other day and today it has been removed for good. I was doing well had not a mega amount of friends but enough and added an application that allowed me to find more and message and poke them BIG MISTAKE. It was after adding Super Profile and Meet that I got this warning message come up. I was talking to a woman who had a child with Aspergers and as I have that as well I thought I could help her. We exchanged messages simply to get her on MSN. Then bang my account was disabled.

There are people on that bloody site that upload sexual images and troll for kids. Yet those people are still there, yet I am banned. I think they need to get their priorities right.

One day they will upset the wrong person. One day someone will take their site down or spam it. If its a computer someone out there will know what to do. I don't want to see it happen. But one day the wrong person will get narked.

I pay 24 pounds a year for face book. Plenty of fish is free but they will ban you for life if you flout their rules. There are no chances . If you break them you are gone.

Steve

Sorry Face Party LOL. I have face book on the brain Face Party is a social dating site and I have met interesting people off it take care

Oh and yes I dod think Face Book is Sexist. I have seen women with over 500 friends and yet Men have been banned for having less than 200

I would have thought that the person who created that site would have been sensible. The first thing to stop spammers is to have like yahoo has. Every so often you have to type in a phrase before you can message. Its a simple system but it works and bots could not read and reply so they would be rejected.

Another way is to log all Internet service providers when someone signs in they have to provide who their ISP is. Then if they misbehave they could lose their connection.

Credit card idea of mine or a phone call and get a special pin to activate the account would work. Spammers would not like to ring up all the time to get pins.

What would pay for all these is that people would have to see a 20 second advert before they could log in. A small price to pay for unlimited messages and pokes and friends etc.

Steve

My idea is to create a jail app and when you do something wrong you got to jail for a day or week ,your friends can still message you but you cant message or use any apps .So at least they wont think you dishoned them like my friends thought when it happened to me

Thanks for all your good work on this topic.

My main complaint is that in the dialog box warning about sending too many messages, there was no mention of the possibility of my account being disabled, only my messages being blocked, which I was not too worried about.

Also I received a warning e-mail prior to having my account disabled, but this was useless, as I was not using the computer that I check my e-mail on! Just because you are logged into Facebook doesn't mean you are checking your e-mail. Why don't they send you a facebook message as well as e-mail ??

Also, the process for getting your account re-activated is very vague (i.e. I have seen 6-7 e-mail addresses people suggest you try) and results and response time seem inconsistent.

I agree with Backhappy that their should be some kind of intermediate punishment level. If they gave clearer (and more effective) warnings and less severe punishments for first-time infringements, they would dramatically cut down the number of appeals they need to deal with.

I.e. if I knew my actions could have resulted in getting disabled, I never would have done them, if I did (for some reason continue) I'd be happy to not be able to send msgs or use apps for X days as a punishment.

And give spammers a second chance? No way. But what if you're not a spammer? Well, they don't know that. Now if someone can just find a way to tell the real spammers from people who just use the site too many times...

Dear Thor:

I have read this thread in the hopes, that maybe, just maybe, I'll have a chance to get my account re-activated. All hope is now fading away....

I too was disabled, for reasons like above, I was merely sending Friend requests for a an Application called Triumph. I too received an ambigious warning that I would be "blocked", well what the hell does that mean.

I soon found out. I received the dreaded, "your account has being disabled by an Administrator.

I have spend countless hours on facebook, meeting up friends, quite frankly I haven't seen or heard of in over 20 years. I've also, help with establishing groups for my family and friends to re-connect. For what? This. All out no holds barred barring..

Now they all think, I've vanished from the facebook of the earth.

I'm pissed.

Thanks Thor.
Maybe a twinkle of hope after all. :)
I'm afraid if I send too many, let me back emails, they won't. Kinda, like dictatorship on the web feeling I get.
I'm a full-time senior programmer, and understand their concerns with spamming etc... They really need to do better job, on how they detect it. I assume its a automated process they use, obviously, no human involved in in this disabled process that runs on their the server.

If they let me back, I'm definitely emailing the "Got ideas for facebook" section, and giving my 2 cents on a more fairness approach to this.

Thanks.

I am not opposed to them having limits on messaging/poking, but I think it is a bit harsh to disable someone's account for exceeding them (with the only meaningful warning an e-mail that you may or may not be checking at the time). Why don't they just put a block on the user from sending/poking/friending/chatting for say 24 hours and only suspend accounts if they receive a valid complaint against a user ?

I can't see how Thor's #1 idea would work, why would you have friends on your list that would vote to get you kicked off ?

Hello All,

I see the main problem of Facebook's is their lack of communication to clearly state guidelines and they are without a proper set of guidlines for the administrators to follow.

I've contacted the Attorney General of NY and CA asking if there is any user protection which will force Facebook to provide a clear and concise Terms and Policies, Code of Conduct.. yadda yadda yadda..

Even though it is a free service and truly enjoyed by many we still have some rights. I too had my account disabled for persistant misuse of a feature.. which was the search feature.

But, luckily my account was reinstated today.. however I'm scared if I'm looking at too many pictures, replying to too many people.. looking at too many pictures.. it's not so fun anymore.

this is the letter I received.. the only warning I received was while I was replying to a letter a friend sent me.. and poof.. I went to send it and it told me that my account had been disabled. I went to my yahoo address and there was a warning.. and 2 seconds later I was disabled.

Today when I recieved the letter from facebook appeals the admin told me I had been warned on several occaisions.. huh? the first contact was when I was disabled.. I wrote back and asked for proof..

I really enjoy the site and without it I would never have regained contact with a lot of old friends ...

---------------
Hi Rebecca,

Facebook has limits in place to prevent users from abusing specific
features on the site. These limits restrict the rate at which you can use
certain features on the site. Unfortunately, we cannot provide you
with the specific rates that have been deemed abusive.

Your account was disabled because you exceeded Facebook's limits on
multiple occasions when using our Search features, despite having been
warned to slow down.

However, after reviewing your situation, we have reactivated your
account, and you should now be able to log in. Please be aware that if your
account is disabled again, we will not be able to reactivate it. Once
logged in, please slow down the rate at which you perform searches on
the site. We appreciate your cooperation going forward.

Thanks for your understanding,

User Operations
Facebook

------------------

This is the latest. A standard letter from Attorney General CA. Sort of hopeful, but others have to write in with their issues. I stated I didn't want legal action at all but want to help force such companies as Facebook to develop clear and concise Policies, Procedures..

I think someone used the word... "transparancy"
-----------------------------------

So here's the latest.. not inspiring but if enough people do this then the Attorney General is required to investigate.

Dear Rebecca

***DO NOT REPLY TO THIS E-MAIL*** ***Reply messages will be returned as
undeliverable*** If you wish to submit additional information, please
use our e-mail webform, available at:
http://ag.ca.gov/consumers/general.htm

Thank you for bringing your consumer information to the attention
of Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. Often it is only through
letters from concerned and responsible citizens that our office becomes
aware of consumer problems.

Complaints are used to develop information about patterns of
business activity which might indicate the need for formal investigation or
law enforcement action by our office. Complaints often bring early
warning of what promises to be a pervasive scam. Once a pattern is
discovered, what originated as a private dispute between buyer and seller may
become a matter of broad public interest and thus warrant the Attorney
General's intervention under the state's consumer protection laws.

The Attorney General's staff also invites complaints of consumer
abuse, deceptive business practices and outright fraud in order to
pinpoint specific data for the purpose of sponsoring new laws or requesting
changes in the current law for the benefit and protection of the
general public.

You should be aware that California law does not allow us to
represent private individuals in personal civil matters. In cases of
statewide significance, we can bring legal action on behalf of the collective
legal interests of the people of this state when substantive evidence
is accumulated which indicates that a firm is systematically violating
California law.

Please be assured that your information will be retained in our
consumer files and is of importance in helping this office to organize
its priorities.

Sincerely,

S. Regalado
Public Inquiry Unit

For EDMUND G. BROWN JR.
Attorney General

How should Facebook change its account disabling policy?

I recommend bring this issue to Friend Feed! There are many Social Media advocates here who will give it traction. There is Michael Arrington from TechCrunch, Robert Scoble from Scobleizer, Muhammad Saleem, Maki form DoshDosh, Andy Beard, Darren Rowse from ProBlogger, Loren Feldman form 1938Media, Adam Lasnik from Google, plus other industry leaders.

Once you become a member of Friend Feed you can post your message in different Social Media rooms!

You are welcome to post in my room

http://friendfeed.com/rooms/igor-the-...

The more attention you bring to the issue, the faster the companies recognize the need for change.

If the Social Media advocates, find the issue relevent they will Blog about it on their blogs. Once industry leaders start blogging about it the other bloggers will blog about it as well.

Bloggers is very powerful community once joined on a common issue.

A grat idea you have there,I had only had my coputor a week,when I was disabled from face book,I have never had a computor before and I am a compleat novice at and to be told I had misused face book has left me compleatley baffled as to what I did wrong and if they dont tell me I will never know what I did,yes I did use it alot as I hadnt used it before and was trying to trace lost friends.I think they way they treated people is dispicable,had I been "jailed" with areason why as you suggested that would have solved the problem

I agree with you entirley,I am a compleat novice on the computor and wouldnt know how to misuse it if I tried, I am compleatley baffled as to why I have been treated like a criminal with no explaination as to what I did wrong but hey there are other way to conacted friends so facebook can take a jump,I can live without it

i have blockes from fbook today

my events give food to people that does not have.

i seng messages o a lot of persons to a event ... but they have the option

nobody said to meeee

Facebook Management
Dear Sir/Madame

Yesterday afternoon, and while adding some 30 names from my sister and cousin pages I get a sudden message that say: Your account has been disabled for persistent and rapid use of a certain feature. Unfortunately, for security reasons, we will not be able to further explain these limits.
I am building my family tree and need to add all my family and relatives.
I did not breach any law or security on Face Book nor did I get a warning that will indicate that I went over a certain limit in adding my relatives
I appreciate if someone explain to me what is happening and reactivate my account. It is unfair to me, my relatives, children, and family. while I invested hundred of hours to post my children, wedding, family and friend albums . I have more than 100 photo albums that are locked into my face book profile and I don't have any duplicates as I don't keep them in my computer. If I did any mistake, It was not intentional and I ask your management to reinstate my account
I sincerely appreciate your help.
Sincerely,

Kheir Sammakieh

kheirs@hotmail.com

facebook does not repy to messages here, neither have they joined, neither do they care.
Facebook owns all photos uploaded to them, they can use and resell them. Bluntly, DO NOT let friends and family use Facebook. Facebook needs to be exposed as the frauds they are

Hi guys

I was sent a virus on Monday, not my fault and it was from a friend that I trusted. It was then sent to all my friends and from what I hear it has been doing the rounds.

They have dissabled my account and I can't get any sort of response from anyone.

I can live without facebook but it's like having your bag stolen. Everything in it is replacable but it's a mision. There are photos I am tagged in by people I don't know that I want to keep and trying to find them all again will be impossible

It's the complete lack of any sort of response from facebook that's driving me mad. I didn't do anything wrong.

They want to make a website with no spammers and real people, that's great. They want us to share our lives and all our every day stuff on their site, fine. They need to provide a resonse from a real person now I have a problem :(((

If anyone knows how on earth you get your account enabled again HELP ! !

FB is only catching the Small fish.
As usual the big one (professional spammers, abusers,etc) get away

Spammers usually have multiple profiles and are usually invisible. FB and
other network get better at reducing Spam, but will never be able to eliminate it.

Unfortunately, the real criminals and spammers are
- always one step ahead of the game, and
- usually get away

Most people who have replied to this thread probably are not the people
who deliberately want to cuase any damage to FB or to harass other users.

If a user has spent lots of time building up their Profiles, there is no point
in FB pulling it down permanently. It is much better to give warnings/penalise the person involved. These people shouls not be classed as Spammers/Criminals

FB must get a clear Policy on this area and fast

there is too much security. if you want 500 friends so do it. no problem. but the conditions are very small and if you raise de limit then your account will be blocked. that's poor and bad, so don't like the strategy...

Any business - particularly online companies such as Facebook - need to present their rules & regs to subscribers in a simple and more fprthright way - rather than in legalize. In other words, " dumb down" the rules, i.e. how many friends you are allowed to have 1) total 2) each day, etc. The perimeters for Facebook are vague at best and mind boggling in the least. Many subscribers are from foreign countries and if English speaking people don't understand the rules & regs - what to say those people who use Facebook to communicate with their relatives and friends in their homeland? People, like myself, are being shut out for no apparent reason - apparent to Facebook but not to me. In no way would I spam or violate a rule if I clearly understood what it was.
What to do?
Attila
www.attilathehoney.com

Attila, it does not matter how simple or clear the Terms of Service are it is Facebook that has no accountability, they do not follow their own rules, they do not respond, they hide from complaints, they ignore any arbitration. they are data mining scum that need to be exposed and to be extermined from doing business. Good people will band together and shut them down.

if anyone thinks Facebook is fair, needs a wake up call.
go create an email account somewhere then register with facebook as a single white catholic female. Then add fake friends, search for dead celebs, war figures, santa claus and in no time you can over 100 fake friends PER DAY and never have to enter any captchas at all

I just sent the third email complaining about my deactivated account.
The only email I got was 'We shall get back to you soon', which was more than week ago!
How long did it take everyone to get reactivated?

I personally would love to see Facebook completely shut down; they remind me of the Stalinist purges - just, poof, you and any existance of you can be gone at their whim without any warning. What a bunch of idiots there must be running this site; I truly can't understand how they have stayed "in business" for as long as they have considering how they treat their "customers". Just think how a professional organization/company like Google could do by taking the business from these "little people" who are enjoying their iron-fisted reign and knowing that at the push of a button they "have the POWER" - pathetic individuals who need to be put in their place by being put out of business.

Thor, that is a great idea. I believe that Facebook should change its account disabling policy.

My situation is a bit different than most here. What happened was that I created a page and accidentally used the same email as my personal account when logging in instead of making myself the administrator of the page.

Well, that shut down my account fast! Or at least, I can't log in.

When I try to reset my password on the login page it says that my email isn't registered with facebook!

I remain logging in on my laptop, only I can't visit any friends pages or make any changes to my account. I can browse to some photos and any area of my site, just can't make changes or leave comments.

I've emailed facebook over a dozen times the last week. Nothing. I've used indignation, pleading, even threatened to commit suicide (of course I didn't mean it, but they didn't know that!) if I didn't get the issues resolved.

Still silence. Wow, that's comforting to know that they don't care about someone committing suicide!

I've emailed them from two different email accounts, both of which are on my FB account. Still nothing.

I've called the BBB. Nothing they can do, though they seemed to have heard my sob story before.

I'm a normal, real person who had less than 100 friends. (I'm relationally challenged okay?) I'm NOT a spammer!

I was going to see about paid advertising on Facebook for the company I work for, but I don't think we want to be doing actual business with such an unprofessional entity. Who's to tell whether or not they'll "accidentally" charge our account thousands of dollars and then just not answer my emails?

Either they need to hire more real customer support people, make some decent guidelines that we can all stick to, or kiss their customer base goodbye.

Wrongfully disabled account? Thank a @%#*! spammer!

My account is diasbled at the moment for behaviour alledged to be spamming. I have tried to contact facebook through the Help Centre, as well as via disabled@facebook and appeals@facebook however I haven't received even an automated reply.

I've never had my account disabled and have always received timely replies from Facebook, both from their technical team and from the admin team.

Just thought I'd let you all know that it ain't all bad !!! You have to remember there are MILLIONS of accounts and no matter how well organised a company is (which is providing mostly FREE services) it'll take time to get through all the stuff and get back to you. Be patient and email them.

To Whom It May Concern:

My account was being disabled starting from two days ago, on the
afternoon of December 31st, 2008. I have sent an e-mail to following
address: disabled@facebook.com but nothing, until now does not happen
to my disabled account. I only received an e-mail from Facebook, which
told me to read the terms and conditions. It also said that they will
reactivate the account for me and I will get the disabled account back
soon.

However, the question is: "How long it will take time for a Facebook's
Administrator to reactive or restore my disabled account return to the
original position?"

Does The Facebook's Teams have another way that is simpler and faster
in overcoming this problem? I have very important contacts and some
applications, which are under my supervision. Therefore, I
particularly need the HELP urgently and need my ACCOUNT ENABLED as
soon as possible. Previously, I am very grateful and thank for the
generous and the kind attention if The Facebook's Teams could help me
to solve and overcome this problem in a simpler and faster way.

Here, the Login E-Mail Address, which associated with My Disabled
Account, is "erwin.mulialim@gmail.com".

Thank you very much for your help and kind attention. May a blessed
peace of Christmas comes to you forever and wish you a Happy New Year
in 2009!

Respectfully Yours,

Erwin Mulialim
---------------------------------------------------
E-Mail: erwin.mulialim@gmail.com

Hello everyone.
24 hour back my FB account was disabled. I played Mafia Wars massively. 8 days. I was good, but needed to post many many posts on the application's wall.
I slowed down after warning but it came out it wasnt slow enough... And got account disabled :/
Then i looked for help in google. Found also that page and helped me so i have to write something to help others :)

I wrote to:
customerservice@facebook.com
abuse@facebook.com (that one gave me reply)
appeals@facebook.com
info@facebookmail.com
warning@facebook.com
disabled@facebook.com

I politely wrote what happened and it wasnt my intention to harm anyone or violate any Terms. Also told i wont do that again. Send couple of emails in that 24 hours. Was really happy and surprised seeing reply :-)

Here's what i got:
---------------------------------
Facebook Support to me
show details 5:00 PM (1 hour ago)

Reply

Hi G***,

Facebook has limits in place to prevent behavior that other users may find annoying or abusive. These limits restrict the rate at which you can use certain features on the site. Unfortunately, we cannot provide you with the specific rates that have been deemed abusive.

Your account was disabled because you exceeded Facebook's limits on multiple occasions when writing on Walls, despite having been warned to slow down.

However, after reviewing your situation, we have reactivated your account, and you should now be able to log in. Please be aware that if your account is disabled again, we will not be able to reactivate it. Once logged in, please slow down the rate at which you write on Walls. We appreciate your cooperation going forward.

Thanks for your understanding,

Rachel
User Operations
Facebook
------------------------------------

So, thats all folks, thanks Kenny and others.
Good luck everyone in getting your account back.

Chers!
G.

I agree 100% with Thor.. I feel also that we should be able to get into some kind of contact with a human on the otherside instead of automated bot replies.. I certainly think that Facebook should also when suspecting someone.. investigate further into their activities to make sure they really are spammers.. instead of just disabling innocent people, and when u get disabled give u some sort of reason.. My account is currently disabled (for 2 days now) and I have no idea what so ever of the reason of why it is.. i got no warning prior to it.. and no email afterwards.. it was just disabled.. and thats that!

Unfortunatly, Facebook will always eventually have limitations by its nature: it's just a website ran by a company, not a social network protocol (protocols are like the web, mails, jabber, openid, etc..). And this company is in a quite monopolistic situation now due to its large user base.

I also had my account disabled in a pretty cavalier way. No warning. But hey, this is the situtation:
you have an account and data one company's servers. You can not move this account to another company (like for mails) and still access to your friends, you can not even get your data back.

I fear Facebook will only become friendlier when there will be true competition in the domain, with more open protocols, so that user's data won't be kept in a sort of prison.

I don't think Facebook should put any limits on activity. Are they insane? i have over 1700 friends on Myspace, and was working on moving to Facebook, adding my Myspace friends on Facebook. So Facebook soon disabled my account for "misuse", "abuse", "harrassment", etc.....

This is like if I said, "I want to start drinking Pepsi instead of Coke", and bought 3 bottles of Pepsi, then Pepsi wrote me a letter saying, "You're going too fast. You can no longer buy Pepsi products ever again. No exceptions."

Nothing should be left to the member's discretion, especially since they will not define "abuse." The best approach is a technical solution that simply stops the user from adding too quickly, if that is their concern, and then they can evaluate if it's legitimate use or not. Many, many, many of these disabled accounts are happening to legitimate, loyal users, and some of them are proving damanging to careers, personal lives, and even those with health impairments.

They urgently need to lighten up on their legitimate but heavy users.

When 2 or 3 desperate kids will have kill themselves because being stupidly disabled from Facebook, their responsibles will be judged and forced to stop all that disabling crap or they will be "disabled" themselves.
The sad thing is that they perfectly know the risk but they just don't care.
"Kids life ?! You're crazy ! We are just a friendly site with good behavior rules"
"And I am just a kid myself ! OK, a clever lucky one but, still, a kid" could well answer Mark Zuckerberg...

Well I was a senior moderator at a writing site. The owner had live people who moderated the place to make sure rules weren't being broken..spamming, pornography, swearing in inappropriate places (there were groups where it was allowed based on a ratings system), etc. The higher level mods had access to notes on the accounts. I think facebook needs more live people looking out for the site and its members. Leaving it up to bots isn't working.

How about disabling the account from public view, but allowing the person whose account it is to LOG IN AND CHANGE whatever it is that's gotten them in trouble, before disabling the account?

The way myspace removes an image or comment and warns you, before simply removing you and disabling? That way people would be able to repair the page, remove any bad content, and reactivate...without getting furious about it.

I don't know about spammy-type stuff but for images? If an image needs to come down, why on earth would you deactivate someone's account instantly, instead of sending a warning and removing the image? It doesn't make any sense.

Hello everyone
My facebook account was disabled last Nov, and after two days it was reneabled. About two weeks ago my account was disabled again for the same reason, copying and pasting links. i have sent 3-4 emails to disabled@facebook.com, one to apppeals@facebook.com, and one to support@facebook.com, I then emailed disabled@facebook.com with my school email (which is tied in with my account), i have heard nothing back but two automated replies, one for each of my mail accounts. im not a bad person i just mad a stupid move. what do you think my hopes are for getting my account back.
John

I think that Facebook users should report those that are bothering them and should be able to block them. I don't think that sending "too many" things should cause someone to get taken off facebook. That is like saying you are only allowed to have "so many" friends. That is silly. Some people have more friends than others, and so they will be communicating with more people......

I wasnt login the Facebook. These pages always gave that message ( Your account has been disabled by an administrator. If you have any questions or concerns, you can visit our FAQ page here) Please help me.
What can I do about that? Why did you cncel or disable my account? how can ı open my account again? ı want to open my account again

Yeah i was adding people with the same App as me some of the apps ask for over 500 of your friends to have the same App. Facebook should let these users with similarity's add each other without disabling accounts. Also what makes more sense is to disable a offenders account for a day then a week then a month then 6 months then a year instead of shutting you down. or they could block you from part of facebook your violating such as if you were sending to many messages you would be blocked from that feature.

Adisson Kahale

Thor,

My new facebook account got disabled......I was probably promoting some of my new music too much on my old page and got disabled, and I emailed FB 10 or 15 times and never heard back......please help?!?!!?!

I added another page yesterday and it was disabled this morning.....

Please help. I want to be part of the FB community and not support things in shifting gears to Twitter and other new social media sites. Myspace, although it still has a lot of users, is basically 'dead' for current trends for people in their 20's, and I'd love to continue using FB for as long as possible.

Please help.

keeptheflow@gmail.com was my email for my first, and biggest, account, and djericrosen@hotmail.com was the second one that got shut down this morning.

I only used the friend adder from my gmail account/aim/etc and received not a single warning about my second account before it got disabled.

Please help!!!!

Thanks,

Eric Rosen
USC Marshall School of Business
MBA '09

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/12/11/...

interesting reading.....If Facebook doesnt' get it together, people are going to switch platforms.....

even a rat knows when to abandon a sinking ship.......

Facebook still has time to turn the ship around, but all of this isn't looking very good for them right now

So basically I was adding old friends from High School which caused my account to be disabled, after a couple years I FINALLY find out the reason, when my second one was disabled, took them that long.. Eh I am not a spammer just a College girl in California trying to making money for my mom and sisters back home, and finish school. I am also holding two great jobs. I have no reason to promote, spam, or advertise anything. It sucks that my account got disabled, especially because my mom jsut began to learn to use it just for me, and she doesn't speak english well. Also I am able to send msgs over my phone, even though I am not able to log in or anything. This is definitley against their private policy I bet, I have no idea how this is possible that my phone i sstill logged in after being reset but it is.. I hate this, I am not a fake person, it just sad to see less and less good people on the earth these days.. lacking a heart.. :(

Facebook disabled my account for multi posting a MOTOCYCLE SAFETY video link only to relevant groups, and not to individuals. There were other links to photos and videos, but again related to general motorcycling and linking to youtube mostly.

Facebook
-Why don't you just ban the person from posting to a particular group or ndividual if it is overdone?
-Why are accounts banned without the case reviewed by a PERSON and not the computers running the system?
-If there is a warning of repeat behaviour, Facebook should pass it on to an HUMAN EMPLOYEE to proceed?
-I have 3 accounts on Facebook and I am sure they are tracked too. If I mean to spam, I am intelligent enough to do it anonymously. Facebook knows most users like myself are sophisticated in use of technology to create multi accounts and use them with malicious intend if they wish.

Response to my group by others:
-Facebook: Get multilingual staff and actually follow what goes on!
-Non-English Groups tend to share few links, photos. and videos.
-I got messaged thanking me for running a lively group all could understand.

Ideas:

1-) They should form a Customer Help Service. When you're telling your case, only thing you could get is some routine answers. You can't even know a bot or a real person is answering.

Actual system is unhumanistic and so cruel. They should stop saying "This Desicion is final" in their first response.

2-) People are using facebook as an photo album, contact list etc. And you don't think that some day all these things will gone. So, when they decide to disable you they should give you a chance to back-up these things.
For example, they could block all the actions that u could do in the FB network but you can still access your defunct profile.

This website is causing numerous discipline issues for administrators and teachers at school. A student at home will write some "trash" about another student. All of these issues surface at school. I am referring to children in elementary school and middle school particularly. I offer a remedy to this problem for your consideration. Only students who are old enough to drive and have a valid driver's license should be allowed to use this website. Make the password their driver's license number, since this is tied in with Homeland Security. Thank you for listening.

Worried School Administrator

My account has been disabled on friday, i have written to disabled@facebook.com heared nothing, now i have written to all the email accounts that you can use to request them to enable your account...and have received the standard information.

The Facebook Team has received your inquiry. We should get back to you soon. In the meantime, we encourage you to review our Terms of Use (http://www.facebook.com/terms.php) for more information.

Thanks for contacting Facebook,

The Facebook Team

It would be great if Facebook would warn people before they disable accounts!
And if we would know the reason.....i have been disabled for thanking friends posting to their wall....no warning at all....

Since i have created and host many groups and causes and need my account i would love to see a change i like the idea that the community comes up with
a more fair system!

I bring many new people to Facebook, and i feel that organisations and businesses cannot use Facebook if accounts can be disabled without any reason...
Facebook is great they should realy listen to their users and not just pretend to be a social media site....

http://www.wildlifefoundation.info
http://tinyurl.com/whaledefenders
http://tinyurl.com/wildlifegroup
http://tinyurl.com/oneperson
http://tinyurl.com/polarbearpetition
http://onepersoncanmad.blogspot.com/
http://tinyurl.com/greedpeace
http://tinyurl.com/wickedwildlifefund
http://tinyurl.com/avaaz
http://tinyurl.com/savethejaguar
http://tinyurl.com/match2friends
http://twitter.com/whaledefenders
http://tinyurl.com/mycauses
http://tinyurl.com/PneumoniaSucks

If you have any suggestions how i can get my account enabled i would love to hear from you hans@wildlifefoundation.info lets try to change this disabling without a warning.....

Thank you for your help!

My account is disabled today. Yesterday i got warning that i got "koobface" virus/worm and disallowed me to made a wall post. I followed the instruction :
1. Change password = its done
2. Scan with updated anti virus = with Symantec AV 10 update 04/17/2009 : it's clean
3. Delete some registry key = nothing found.
I think it's save for me to post on my wall again. When i try to, i got message that my account is disabled. I sent message to disabled@facebook.com and got direct automatic reply.
What should i do again? Anyone can help?
Thanks

if only i could click the share on facebook button...

Facebook should change its policy on disabling accounts.
Atleast let the users know of it first this is just unfair.
And to be honest i am quite disappointed with facebook

my facebook acount have been disabled from 4 days now.......beacuse i did alot of add request repidly

and i have send alot of mails for facebook teams and i alawys have the massage that "We should get back to you soon"

and one massage told me "we have determined that you violated our Terms of Use by misusing our site features to harass other users. We will not be able to reactivate your account for any reason. This decision is final"

it make me so sad because i seriosly need my acount back
and i see it is unfair beacuse all people who have the same exact proplem have their acount re-enable back

and i not lose hope and mailed them alot of mails again and then i have the first massage "We should get back to you soon"

is that mean i still have a hope???.........is it fair to make final decision and with others re-enable them back ????

did any one have help????

shold i still send them mails ???

leave face book allof you if your freinds would smile at you and and love you all week long then got drunk on sunday and beat you to a pulp you wouldnt let it happen three times would you if your boss walked out of his office on monday did an eenie meanie miney mo round the office every monday and fired mo youd start looking for a job to go to that did have security
m wars is on many sites and fake book and zucker burg dont deserve you his company in my opinion exhibits behaviour similar to an emotionless sociopath
and dont forget its alleged he hacked the first profiles out of harvards main frame and suffered a suspension for it then dropped out of the finest business school in the world

the actions of a fool an ingrate and a quitter

of course iam not directly saying that our freind is any of these things as i have never met him or his legal team

in answer to the original question of course they must change this policy its a disgusting way for any business to treat a client in a democratic nation
i am less bothered by spam than i am by the misery and disolutionment
he and his gang of four hundred cause they should turn there security soft ware off and browse the book by hand looking for rat bags

they voting system suggested is clever but its not a jury is it you cant ask some ones friends to to be there jury for the same reasons it wont happen in a court bias

the customer is allways right by provideing content and watching there adds your there customer your right they are wrong and if they employed some people over thirty they might stop making new guy errors all the time if any one knows a good place other than myspace to play m wars i am all ears

There are some good ideas here, but perhaps the most persuasive way to convince Facebook it's time to pay attention to their poor customer service ways is to hit them where it counts - group together and petition (or even boycott) their advertisers. With 200+ million users it's doubtful they will ever consider any amount of wrongfully disabled users a problem. And it's obvious they don't lose any sleep over letting emails from disabled users sit for days, even weeks, before addressing them. The only "customer" that Facebook appears to acknowledge is their advertisers. It would be great if someone on this site (perhaps a legal type) could start a petition of disabled users and then start contacting Facebook advertisers on our behalf. The approach could be cordial to start (i.e. "As an advertiser, we on this petition feel you should know that Facebook has a very poor customer service practice and is increasingly disabling the very users you are paying to advertise to. Please use your weight as a customer and call Facebook to insist that they change their practice for disabling accounts, that they reinstate wrongfully disabled users faster, and that they improve upon their generally lax customer service response to all user issues.") Facebook isn't just a social networking site anymore - it's a business. As with all businesses, the way to their heart is through their wallets.

Sorry Thor, as much as I think you want to help, I don't think that Facebook gets it. They have had plenty of time to address the issue (and they are certainly aware of the frustration they are causing). But the real problem is that they don't care. They are still basking in their wild success and that attitude that they can do anything they want will be their own downfall. The sad part (for us) is that it won't come soon enough.

Internet ideas are a dime a dozen. Facebook itself was a clone of other sites and already the number of sites that offer what Facebook offers is beyond number. What that means for Facebook is that their success won't last forever. There will come a day when they realize that they aren't hitting the record number of new enrollments, that they aren't headline news and that developers aren't interested in developing for the Facebook platform anymore. They will become old news.

For those of us that want to use their service (or tried to) it was only because our friends were there. The best thing that we can do is get our friends off of the Facebook ship and somewhere else. When all the cool kids leave the party, then Facebook will be just another one of those internet fads to come and go.

Social Networking has a vast following so when we do find a good service we'll use it. Facebook wants to be that service but obviously doesn't want to be bothered to put in the effort. That is fine. I won't put in the effort to use their service - simple as that.

From my own experience with the Police State of Facebook:

I just noticed my Facebook account had been disabled.

I ́m using Facebook as a very important tool in my work. I arrange Club Events and my network / friends / team partners use Facebook as the primary tool for communication with me. Therefore I really need the profile back and working as soon as possible.

I got the message for "adding too many friends" when I was adding people from Hongkong who I know likes to party. I ́m planning to make a Club Event in Hongkong in 2010, so I wanted to get feedback about the favorite music / clubs they have over there. I stopped adding friends as soon I got the message, since I thought a barrier had been reached.

As I mentioned, all my vital contacts are active mainly through Facebook at the moment. However, I ́m searching for other tools to use, since a "sudden blocking of my account" is not what I had expected. Therefore this all makes Facebook a very unstable and a dangerous platform for me to use.

My Inbox needs my attention, and as it seems, at the moment it is completely impossible to reach it. I ́m already receiving mobile messages from people who wonder where my account disappeared.

This is most inconvenient and very unreliable service from Facebook.
Also I was unaware that they do not encourage people to make new friends through Facebook.

Yours,
Jean

I agree with all the proposals.

Must of all facebook should be more consistent. Got an impeccable account disabled for no apparent reason, all I can think of is I accepted too many friends requests at once, which I think is perfectly natural for an account my size; however I've seen tons of fake profiles and spammers operate for months and even years! If facebook was a totally clean place with no spammers or fake profiles, I could make my peace with their "strictness" but I've seen legit accounts like mine, Joel Comm's and others which are 100% legit, spam free accounts disabled. Facebook should triple check before disabling an account, for a technicality, like accepting too many friends at once or joining too many groups, some of us get 100's of invitations per day and they should take that in consideration before pulling the plug.

please help my account facebook because i can't login to my facebook cause if i login that always account disabled and how i can login to my facebook normaly again
I realy needed my facebook to my indiependent band promotion and in the my facebook have any sponsore, producer and new friend and fansclub,
i realy needed that my facebook account to login and promotion again
my facebook the_hook@rocketmail.com
thank you for helping my facebook account to enable again

noI think if they have humans reviewing their accounts. There are also alot of gamers on Facebook. I would say that gamers spend more time on fb than any other group of people. not many chat for hours with others or write on walls or participate much. As a matter of fact many people that I know in real life as opposed so online communities, rarely log in or use fb much at all. So it is the gamers and others that establish groups and use the site for social networking they are punishing. I guess they just want a large database of names who don't really use their site. I'm not sure. All I know is I am furious for spending so much time on their site to have my account disabled and I am unable to get a human to respond to me.

(:- hmm its more then 2 weeks pass now still i am waiting for facebook reply...

How do partners of a fb account or disable the disabled, and a violation of what I had arrived aja pas I can log in and appear "account disabled",,,

my account until someone in the disabled, the page has been org violation,
But I had a violation
plese help me: soncy.mig33@gmail.com

Would very much appreciate if facebook could reactivate my account.

thanakrit_a@yahoo.com

To answer the question "How should Facebook change its account disabling policy?" at least to me is quite simple. Before I present my answer, I want to ask Facebook if there is anyone at Facebook that knows how to reason and treat people in a humane manner? The reason I ask this question is because Facebook on the surface appears to be user friendly and concerned about its members. However, upon closer examination Facebook does not have a due process and does not care at all about its members rights and feelings. Here are a few examples. Facebook limits the number of friends you can have and limits the number of friends you can make in a given period of time, limits the number of groups you can belong to, limits the number of messages you can send in a given period of time, limits the number of “polks” you can make and no doubt other limits I am not mentioning. All limits are ruthlessly enforced by giving warnings a breaching Facebook's limits has occurred without telling you what the specific limit rate number is and then disabling a member, or abruptly disabling a member without a warning and without saying what limit rate number that was breached and of course without a specific number that is deemed to be to "fast." Most members are permanently disabled and are told that Facebooks decision is final and there is no recourse. To me this is analogous to giving speeding tickets without having a speed limit posted. In Facebook warnings and in their disabling message they call a "guilty" member a scammer or spammer and further say you "may be" infringing upon the rights other members by harassment.

Now to answer the question " "How should Facebook change its account disabling policy?" To me all Facebook or should I say at this time "Facelessbook" has to do if, dare, I use the terms thinks or feels, it needs limits to guard against real threats to security is to program in limit governors that will stop the breach of policy before it is breached. Limit governors will enforce the Facebook policy of limits and will as well be a security measure to guard against real scammers and spammers. A limit governor is the same thing as a speed governor on a vehicle. As an old farm boy from Iowa I fail to see the difficulty in having a limit governor policy and implementing it with a computer program. With limit governors in place members will not be disabled because they will not be allowed to breach polices and real scammers and spammers will not be able to operate so why be a member?

If Facebook is treating its international members with ruthless complete disregard for their rights and feelings like it treats it domestic members with ruthless complete disregard for their rights and feelings I believe Facebook is not only giving itself a black eye it is also giving the United States of America a BIG black eye in the eyes of the rest of the world. I ask Facebook to please wake up and see the light. If you are so paranoid about your members governing themselves by self enforcement of your unknown limits and rates than at the very least give members an exact number that is considered a breach of your limits and rates and or place your own limit governors on whatever you want to governor and stop disabling members who are actually your friends as well as friends of other members. I believe if Facebook will place its own limit governors to enforce its policies or even better do away with limits and allow freedom to reign you will be creating good will for yourself and most importantly from your members and disabled former members.

One final note. In all fairness (?) to Facebook, Facebook SAYS it has an appeals process, customer support and a disabled contact to assist disabled members to sort through what has happened and evidently to somehow offer hope of membership reinstatement. However, because I know from first hand experience, the contact services are in fact a cruel automated ruse that does not reply at all or replies with an automated reply and nothing is done. There may be a very minuscule minority of disabled members who have been reinstated but a large VAST majority of disabled members are ignored and do not receive a due process and are never again allowed to be a member of Facebook. I want to ask everyone if Facebook's current polices and practices are what the United States of America is founded upon? Thank you for your time and interest in my answer to “"How should Facebook change its account disabling policy?" Sincerely yours, Mark A. Dix, Brooklyn, Iowa, USA

I'm pissed. Facebook should stop acting like a total dick.

Facebook should be taken to court and prosecuted. The prosecution should withhold all information about the charge and all supporting evidence. Facebook should be found guilty of an unspecified offence and have its site deleted permanently.
We expect to see this sort of behaviour from restrictive and oppressive regimes (e.g. Green Dam from China.) These regimes have things to hide, and they are afraid of their people. Facebook is just the same.

My facebook can't log-in if i log-in it, it says that my account is disable please help me how to get back my account I didint do anything im just playing applications in faceboo

Thor,
As Justin said in the above,I don't think their getting it......They have no pride as a big brand to even warn the users....THIS SHOWS HOW MUCH THEY CARE ABOUT US!!!!!.....................Its so sad that we have all become dependent to FB....And i very much agree with your solutions to the problem....Face Book: Connecting people....We also disconnect them when ever we like!....