You might have noticed a slowdown in posts for the Dalton Daily Citizen Facebook page.
Well, there’s a reason for that — because Facebook won’t let me.
You see, about a month ago I created a new account for Facebook so I could be an admin for the newspaper’s social media account.
To sign up for a new account, you have to provide an email and/or a phone number. Remember this part, because it plays an important part later on.
So I make the account and I get a fellow Dalton Daily Citizen writer-person to flag my account to be a moderator.
Well, my tenure there lasted about one hour before I got a message from the ironically faceless Facebook hall monitors notifying me that my new account had been suspended.
Why? No reason was given.
So I appealed the decision. You get one opportunity to do so. Definitely remember this, because it’s an even more important part of the story.
I get a message the next day from Facebook basically saying “oops, our bad, you’re not a Russian bot so you’re free to post stuff under the Dalton Daily Citizen banner again.”
Then, just a few hours later, I got another message. What do you know, my account was banned AGAIN.
Except this time, it wasn’t just suspended, it was TERMINATED. That means all I can do is log in and see a message that reminds me, in unmistakable terms, that I’m still terminated.
I can’t appeal this explanation-less decision on Facebook’s part. I can’t message anyone, I can’t send an email to anybody about it and there’s no phone number to call to plead my case. There’s a customer service center you can interact with, but what do you know, if your account is terminated you can’t access ANY of those features.
All right, so I decided to bite the proverbial bullet and create another Facebook account.
I used the same corporate email address as before and got pinged with a message indicating that there’s already an existing account with said email.
You know, the one that got terminated. Which means I can’t create ANOTHER account as long as I’m using that particular email address as a contact point.
Now, right off the bat you have to be a little perplexed by this. I mean, the fact that I have an official Dalton Daily Citizen email address would lead you to assume I’m not some troll from Latvia getting paid by the bitcoin to shill disinformation memes.
But nope. Once Facebook gives one email address the proverbial scarlet letter, it’s IMPOSSIBLE to use it again.
Oh, but it gets worse. Since you have to turn on dual authentication, that means Facebook also logged the phone number associated with the wrongly terminated account.
Which means even if I did somehow manage to get the account approved, the phone number used to send me confirmation codes is still on the social media blacklist.
Which means to even CREATE another account — let alone one that would allow me to personally access and update the newspaper’s social media page — not only would I have to use another email, I’d have to use a different phone number.
Huh. Do you think they’ll let me write off “new iPhone so I can update my Facebook page” as an itemized business expense on next year’s taxes? Media-craving trial lawyers, take note — I might just be the test case you’ve been dreaming about.
It’s an ironic and tragic situation here. Facebook implemented a plethora of security features and checks and balances in the aftermath of the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections to allegedly scrub the platform of fake news. Yet in their overkill approach, they’ve also made it impossible for an actual, real, living and breathing news editor to bring news to his own Facebook audience.
And let’s face it, Facebook IS a monopoly. No other social media site has the same market penetration and the same demographics that appeal to traditional newspaper readers. And Facebook is a huge driver of website traffic, and if we can’t post our stuff on social media, that means a lot of people won’t even realize we’ve published articles about this, that or the other.
It’s especially annoying because Facebook gives us the ability to interface with readers directly AND in real time. I’m a big proponent of community dialoguing, but without social media access I can’t ask readers what stories they’d like to see or give them an opportunity to weigh in on hot-button issues in the community. And that, ultimately, hurts you as readers as much as it does us as newspaper producers.
But when you’re dealing with a Silicon Valley monolith like Facebook, you just can’t win — or even channel your complaints to them.
Maybe somebody will pass this along to Mark Zuckerberg and let him know his company’s draconian policies are hurting local journalism.
Or maybe we ought to migrate back to MySpace. Hey, at least that one will actually LET me log in.
James Swift is the managing editor of the Dalton Daily Citizen.