140 pointsby zenincognito9 hours ago37 comments
  • raincole7 hours ago
    The whole article doesn't even contain the word 'AI' or 'LLM." There is zero explanation about why they think it's caused by an AI Meta deployed recently. The clickbait game is crazy.

    > We manage millions of dollars in annual Meta ad spend.

    Oh nvm. They're full-time clickbaiters... what else did I expect.

    > They set up a dedicated work account, which, by the way, is standard professional practice

    Standard professional practice invented by ad agencies themselves, against Facebook's policy[0].

    [0]: https://www.facebook.com/help/975828035803295/

    • bergen5 hours ago
      No serious company wants their key users to log into a platform with their personal accounts, this would be a security nightmare and asking for trouble
      • fakedang5 hours ago
        I wonder how exactly is social media managed at larger companies. I never found an enterprise type login for Facebook, and the only way to log in is by first creating a personal account?
        • frizlaban hour ago
          you’re supposed to use your personal account to create a business “profile” for the company you work for. the company is supposed to have created a space for it on business.facebook.com

          creating a “pro” facebook account is indeed disallowed by the facebook’s policy

          I’ve done that multiple times. works well but you indeed to not have a clear separation between work and personal life, which is not good. I don’t mind it because I don’t use facebook, but it could be a problem for other people.

          I honestly don‘t get how facebook think the world works…

    • ryanjshaw4 hours ago
      The link you posted says:

      > It's against our Community Standards to maintain more than one personal account.

      > Bear in mind that a personal profile is for non-commercial use and represents an individual person.

      Really unclear to me what a business is supposed to do. Not a particularly useful link.

      • raincole4 hours ago
        Set up a business page from a personal account. That has always been Facebook's stance on this issue. Like, for a decade or more.

        And before someone says "it's a bad policy..." yeah it is. But I don't think one gets to complain about how AI ruined their business when the whole business practice is built upon violating their platform's policy.

    • zenincognito5 hours ago
      >We have contacted Meta support dozens of times over the past 30 days. Each representative confirmed that account creation and monitoring are now handled almost entirely by AI. Despite successfully completing required face verifications, our accounts continue to be flagged and banned by automated parameters. There is currently no path for manual intervention; even internal support tickets are failing to reach human reviewers with the authority to resolve these systemic blocks.

      >Oh nvm. They're full-time clickbaiters... what else did I expect.

      There is nothing clickbait about this article. I fail to understand why take such a hostile approach to something on the internet where you completely miss the point under contention - auto account bans via AI

      • scotty794 hours ago
        Ad industry is one of the most vile things on the internet. You won't find any sympathy here. You might have been blisfully unaware that you are hated in the nation until now, but noone is wishing you well. Even though the problem you rise is legitimate and interesting the internet couldn't have asked for a more deserving entity to have it.
    • kybernetyk6 hours ago
      >AI is killing our agency

      >We manage millions of dollars in annual Meta ad spend.

      So AI is doing something good for once :)

    • Slothrop996 hours ago
      That's because the article is slop.
      • reactordev5 hours ago
        Even if it’s not, this kind of business is untenable now.
        • zenincognito5 hours ago
          You be surprised what agencies turn over.
  • matt_heimer7 hours ago
    I think most big tech companies are like this and it's just going to get worse as AI adoption increases internally.

    2 days ago I tried to create new gmail account and Google insisted that my phone number was used too many times. Fine, I'll pay for a new workspace account... Submit my billing information, that same that I use on other accounts but now there is an extra validation step that requires my ID and copies of my bank statement. Wasn't happy about that but tried it anyway. They expected my entire checking account number to appear on my bank statement. My bank account number is for my entire account and not just the checking portion but even if they were the same my bank redacts parts of the number so that if anyone gets my statement they can't just start drafting money.

    The additional information section where I explain things is obviously ignored because the auto generated responses are sent pretty fast.

    I can't decide what the saddest part is, the fact that their "give us a moment" emails that are send immediately after submitting still say they need extra time to process the request due to limited staffing because of covid or the fact that Gemini was brutal in criticizing them when I asked if it was normal to expect complete account numbers on the statement.

    Similar to OP, the embedded help chat got in a loop of telling me I needed to speak to a rep to fix the issue and when attempting to connect me it would deny the request because I wasn't a paying customer yet.

    • lelanthran6 hours ago
      > I think most big tech companies are like this and it's just going to get worse as AI adoption increases internally.

      Welcome to UB, at scale, in every language.

      Everyone loves to complain about C (and C++) UB; well, now, you have that in every language.

      We're at the point now that my manually written (non-trivial) projects C hits fewer undefined behaviour than even trivial projects constructed with an LLM and human "review".

      (I even wrote a blog post about it!)

      • ido6 hours ago
        What does UB refer to here?
        • lefra6 hours ago
          Undefined Behavior
          • reactordev5 hours ago
            The arch nemesis of software engineering. The exceptionally exceptional exception. It doesn’t throw, it glides. It festers. It waits until production day. It rears its head from the dead. The demon with 1000 names…
            • Bombthecat3 hours ago
              The guy who orders minus 1.5 beers lol
          • ryanjshaw4 hours ago
            Kind of ironic, using a UT in a comment about undefined behavior.
    • csomar6 hours ago
      The sad part is that you gave your information and kept trying to give them money despite all of this hassle? What is exactly you are looking for? If it's email, there is tons of providers out there who will be happy to take your money.
      • Slothrop996 hours ago
        And there are many tons more providers who will be happy to take your money while promising to spam google. TFA prob ain't exactly legit, eh?
      • 6 hours ago
        undefined
      • bryanrasmussen6 hours ago
        the only thing I can think that would make it imperative that you get a gmail instead of other email provider is that google provides the ecosystem of apps and google apps script to automate them, if you have built up a lot of tooling for automating things it can be a pretty sweet platform to do things in.
      • throwaway2905 hours ago
        As a Russian, maybe they are trying to make sure you're not a Russian.

        It used to be that if I pay I am ok, now if I pay you go to jail. so you better make sure i'm not the wrong type of guy to accept money from

    • TacticalCoder6 hours ago
      > Fine, I'll pay for a new workspace account...

      That's bad for you don't have the account yet but at Google, once you're a paying customer --and hence you're not the product anymore--, there are actual people helping you on the phone when you call them. Of course the catch-22 here is that you don't have the Workspace account yet, so you may sorry out of luck.

  • psgdev6 hours ago
    I’ve been trying to sell my old iPhone and AirPods on Facebook Marketplace. Since I wanted them gone quickly, I priced them a bit lower than similar listings but Facebook instantly flagged them as “counterfeit.” I thought maybe the issue was my photos, so I relisted with clearer pictures… same result. Every appeal just gets an automated rejection with no real explanation. Now I’m getting warnings that I’m “at risk of losing access to Marketplace.”

    It honestly feels like their AI is using a hard, oversimplified rule: “iPhone 8 listed for $80? Must be counterfeit.”

    • zoky6 hours ago
      Man, fuck Facebook Marketplace. I cannot figure out for the life of me why everyone decided to abandon the perfectly useable Craigslist for that unreliable, buggy, scam-laden pile of hot garbage. Never once have I had a single good experience with Facebook Marketplace.
  • tgtweak6 hours ago
    I've ran into this even in my limited advertising on meta - they actaully want you to use the actual individual's facebook account to manage the ads accounts, even on behalf of the clients through the agency.

    This is kind of insane behavior but when you remember that google actually supports enterprise domains and SSO and facebook has very little of that - or relatively little - it makes sense. If you are personally banned from facebook for whatever reason, you cannot have a business account under another email - once you validate your identity it regurgitates the ban.

    Despite this being an obvious antipattern to security it is very much by design for meta.

    • smelendez6 hours ago
      Yeah, Meta wants you to have a single Facebook account under your legal name that you use for all your personal and professional contact with them. Never mind if you’re freelancing for three companies that don’t want to be linked to each other and running the page for your church and your karate studio.

      So of course people try to set up multiple accounts, but anyone over a certain age setting up a new account is naturally flagged as suspicious. The solution is just to allow a type of accounts that only manage business pages, but that would probably mess up their stats.

    • cube006 hours ago
      I ran into the same thing, I deleted my Facebook account years ago, needed a business account to run ads, signed up and instantly banned when I wasn't even banned when was originally a Facebook user, guess it's punishment for my desertion.
    • alex11386 hours ago
      If platforms didn't hand out bans like candy (probably USING said AI!) this MIGHT make a bare modicum of sense
  • steve19777 hours ago
    Considering that ads are a pest and all Meta platforms make Hell look like a vacation location, my empathy is very limited.
    • danybittel6 hours ago
      And building your "agency" around a sole platform..
      • agilob6 hours ago
        They say they also run on Google and Tiktok
  • pogue7 hours ago
    The same thing is happening to end users, the consumers that they maybe want seeing those ads. Random, totally out of the blue bans on Meta platforms for no rhyme or reason. It's all over reddit:

    r/facebookdisabledme

    r/FixMyInstagram

    r/InstagramDisabledBans

    r/MetaLawsuits

    • realusername7 hours ago
      It's almost impossible to create a new Facebook account nowadays and I wonder if that's one of the cause of the decline of Facebook
      • Barbing7 hours ago
        I wonder if they ever had enough of the California Attorney General on them (after people posted guides on how to seek resolution through that channel)

        btw saw recommendations to use a VPN to be able to use the complaint form… overall, wonder how much Meta cost taxpayers there (maybe they make up for it?)

      • jwrallie7 hours ago
        It has been happening in other platforms too. I had a tough time creating a new LinkedIn account after deleting mine around 10 years ago. At one point one day in the new account I got banned, then I submitted my ID and got in only to be banned again within the same timespan. All the same accusations that the profile information I submitted was not “correct”, translation: I was not me according to someone else’s idea of what being me is, even though I was able to show them a proper ID.

        I only got it working stable after finding an obscure email on Reddit and re-sending my ID to a completely different confirmation system.

        • NoMoreNicksLeft6 hours ago
          I wasn't going to send my driver's license to some overseas contractor... I eventually hunted down a form for submitting a notarized statement proving who I was. It's more than a bit ridiculous.
      • KellyCriterion6 hours ago
        How do they expect future growth then?

        In general, its really stunning that Meta stock price grew that much since 2012 - when they IPO'd in 2012, I thought i will be a "cheap stock" around 50 - 70 USD.

        • cyanydeez3 hours ago
          Facebook appears to want go turn your grandparents into AIs and sell them back yo you when they die.
          • npodbielskian hour ago
            Oh then I guess it is good that they dead already. And they never had an account. So I am safe.
      • Maxious6 hours ago
        nice username... I was going to say, we warned about this with the google+ real name policy "nymwars" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymwars and the cloudflare AI bot blocking that blocks humans

        Yes it's potentially good for reducing spam and terribly good for collecting personal information for advertisers. Both at the expense of making social networks inaccessible to real people.

  • mromanuk6 hours ago
    This article is LLM generated, has the typical structure, that I’m tired of reading by now. They Always write using this rhythm, repeating 3 times a list of dramatic stuff “every this, every that”.
    • pmdr6 hours ago
      Could be. But they're in the SEO business, articles sounded like that long before LLMs were trained on them to produce the same crap.
      • endofreach5 hours ago
        Exactly. It's been like that long before LLM bullshit.
    • zenincognito5 hours ago
      Can confirm this is fully human written.
    • bryanrasmussen6 hours ago
      or it has the typical structure because that is what content providers made their workers provide over the last decade due to engagement stats showing that got the most users clicking, responding, subscribing, and that is what the LLM was trained on.
  • cagz6 hours ago
    I don't think this is an AI issue. It is about the terms of use: they don't allow a second account, even if it's intended for ad management. The recommended way is to use Meta Business Manager via the existing account.
  • gusfoo3 hours ago
    I really tried my best to open a Facebook account, so I could open a developer account. All correct and real info. Instaban immediately after account creation, immediate "go away forever" email after clicking the "appeal" button.

    The fact that you have to open a personal account first, in order to start a developer account seems mad to me. I have no interest at all in having a personal Facebook account.

  • galoisscobi7 hours ago
    Stop giving your money at Meta, it’s a simple solution and an ethical one.
    • aiauthoritydev7 hours ago
      Easy to say but livelyhood of many families might depend on this agency functioning.
      • dbtc7 hours ago
        All the more reason for them to start finding alternatives ASAP, at least as a backup. Those with knowledge and skill should help them.
      • cyanydeez3 hours ago
        The grift economy must continue because so many have mouths to feed
      • steve19777 hours ago
        [flagged]
    • cube006 hours ago
      I would but Google charge me $5 a click and nobody will engage with my Reddit ads (not even an ASCII dong in the open comments anymore) and zero conversions.
    • ThrowawayTestr7 hours ago
      Just abandon your livelihood, simple as.
      • hyperhello6 hours ago
        I couldn’t sympathize more, but if there is no money in shoveling more ads into the web, then find something else to do.
    • 7 hours ago
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  • nelsonic7 hours ago
    Facebook doesn’t need “users” or even Advertisers anymore, they have Ai to create and consume all the content & likes!
    • zenincognito5 hours ago
      Agencies have a lot of control and say in how clients spend their money.
    • Gigachad6 hours ago
      AI can’t buy things yet.
      • bergen5 hours ago
        Openclaw is on it
  • thund4 hours ago
    If anyone wonders how AI might end up undermining humanity, this is a small preview. We're gradually handing over more processes to automation (YOLO, right?) while the systems themselves remain fundamentally "non empathetic". Maybe this specific case comes down to a poorly designed prompt from 2024... but so far the trend isn't "friendlier" automation, everyone is after more powerful automation...
  • ayaros7 hours ago
    If meta wants to cut out the middleman and let businesses pay directly for ai generated ads, I doubt they have any incentive to fix this.
    • KellyCriterion6 hours ago
      This wont help the customers from the article?

      The reason why they need agencies to deploy ads is thats its not their core business - so they wont be able to setup Meta ads on their own?

      • cyanydeez3 hours ago
        Facebook will provide AN AI to the ad agency client. Ad agency redundant.
  • Glyptodon7 hours ago
    I tried signing up for Instagram once because for some reason there are a lot small businesses in artsy spaces (jewelry, etc.) who basically make it the main way to interact with them (or did) and I got banned almost instantly for no reason I could discern. Kind of gave up at that point (well, after trying to go through their "show an ID process" and it not working) and if I want to see some artist's insta I ask my wife. Don't care that much about the agency stuff, but their account management situation is indeed totally broken.
    • richrichardsson5 hours ago
      Switch off your ad blocker/pi hole temporarily..

      I tried three times of getting insta-banned before getting advised here to do the same.

    • Krutonium7 hours ago
      In a similar vein I made an account on ebay once years ago, and inside a day I was banned for "unpaid seller fees"

      On my one day old account that had never done a transaction???

    • pyb6 hours ago
      Same here, I've not been able to open an account, it's a bit frustrating.
  • js4ever7 hours ago
    I can confirm this is real! Last week I tried to register a Facebook ads account, I got instantly banned for violating TOS ... Like 2 minutes after registration
  • nl7 hours ago
    This doesn't seem anything to do with AI (except in the broad sense the account getting disabled seems automated)
  • dwohnitmok7 hours ago
    In a twist of irony, it feels like this entire post is also written with AI.
    • zenincognito4 hours ago
      Can confirm, not AI written.
    • empressplay7 hours ago
      no, it's just Australian.
    • Lucent7 hours ago
      [flagged]
      • Shank7 hours ago
        How reliable is Pangram now? In the past, these types of detectors had a really high false positive rate. Is it improved?
      • oefrha7 hours ago
        I looked at all the AI signatures and they’re all phrases I use in my very human writing. If you’re anti-AI generated content then stop posting clearly marked AI dross like this I guess.
      • runako7 hours ago
        "work and personal" is an AI signifier?

        "'s the thing"?

        "across multiple"?

        "identity verification" is 11x more likely to appear in AI writing, per the tool?

        I call BS.

      • ThrowawayTestr7 hours ago
        Ah yes, using AI to verify AI writing, very trustworthy.
  • 7 hours ago
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  • mediumsmart6 hours ago
    Humans Deploying Ads that are Killing Our Internet Outsmarted by AI Killing Our Internet. There is some Deep Meta in this somewhere.
    • jeron6 hours ago
      deep meta, pun intended?
  • knallfrosch7 hours ago
    I'd bill those wasted hours on your clients. Tell them ads are cheaper elsewhere.

    But really. Facebook doesn't care. They've got their eyes on your clients and want to cut you out using AI tools that are easy to use.

    • cube006 hours ago
      Except the clients want to be seen on Facebook because their social groups are on there.
  • 6 hours ago
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  • ForgotMyUUID6 hours ago
    Feel so sad for you, guys ;( Unfortunately, I do not have any account at Meta, but I wish I had one. I could spare one for you ><
  • bronlund6 hours ago
    This is wonderful. Someone has found a way to attack Meta using their greed against them, and it’s working :)
  • aiauthoritydev7 hours ago
    The only relationship I have with Meta is Whatspp and I will quit the day my family moves to something else.
  • SanjayMehta7 hours ago
    > Sounds reasonable, until you realise that the appeal tool is inside the platform – the same platform the specialist is completely locked out of. You cannot appeal a login ban from behind a login screen.

    That's hilarious. Exactly how Bluesky operates.

  • ripped_britches6 hours ago
    Yep this has been my experience as well
  • measurablefunc7 hours ago
    I can't tell if this is a real company or not. Look at their about page & you'll notice some really surrealistic prose.
    • zenincognito5 hours ago
      Glad you like it or not! Can confirm we are real.
  • HDThoreaun7 hours ago
    This is probably on purpose because meta wants to kill third party ad buyers and have customers just directly use their first party ad buying platform
  • imafish6 hours ago
    It is insane how bad customer support you can get away with, if you’re just big enough.
  • phplovesong6 hours ago
    AI banned a AI generated ad. Its kind of funny that then some C suite complains. The shit people dig themselves in is truly amazing.

    Tech today is treated like some drunken first year collage fratboy a sex doll.

    It fails. Every. Time.

    Then we get popcorn time.

  • 2Gkashmiri7 hours ago
    i have a client whose whatsapp was banned for "violating terms and conditions" but they have not specified what terms or what exactly did he did.

    its all a black box mystery. I guess we have to sue them and then compel them to give reasons and unban them

    • idiotsecant7 hours ago
      Good luck with that. I'm not sure what basis you would have to do either of those things.
  • alex11387 hours ago
    I'm curious whether anybody but wunderkind, we-want-bubble-2.0-after-the-first-one-crashed hype speculation Zuckerberg could have gotten away with theytrustmedumbfucks. Maybe he'd be "making an insightful commentary on human nature" if it wasn't for verified stories to back up his general character like hacking the Crimson reporters

    The site has been awful for years and years. That he's shoving AI down throats is the same confirmation we always had: he doesn't care about you (but this was obvious from Graph Search)

  • camillomiller5 hours ago
    You base your entire business on Meta. You complain that Meta Leopards eat your face. Just jog on, geezers. The entitlement here is off the charts.
  • devcraft_ai5 hours ago
    [dead]
  • samiv6 hours ago
    The users with their account issues are such a DRAG! How can a poor trillion dollar company be expected to be able to manage this situation? Worst case scenario is they'd have to gasp hire humans to resolve issues.

    /s

    Same thing happened to me on discord. Created new account and before first login it was already banned. Yay.

  • daryl_martis6 hours ago
    [dead]
  • 7 hours ago
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