Calling Kafka

Doing the Right Thing

No good deed goes unpunished. Recently, I did a photo shoot of a Masonic event. Local Masons and two Masonic Youth groups joined forces to raise some funding for youth activities by inflating 2,400 New Year's Eve celebration balloons for Club Lucky, a Restaurant and Lounge in Chicago's Bucktown neighborhood. The event was fun, and successful. You can view my Masonic Blog post and the photos I took here.

Later, I was asked by a Masonic Brother to post photos on the Illinois Freemasonry Facebook group. I explained that I don't "do" Facebook. You can find out why, in this personal blog post I wrote in 2021. My Brother said it was important, so I said, "OK. I'll open a new account and post them." So I opened an account and joined the Illinois Freemasonry group.

I posted the photos and immediately got a number of positive responses, so I was content with the results. Out of the 120 photos I had (which appear on my Masonic Blog) I posted what I thought were the best 40, not wanting to overwhelm things with photos that were often near duplicates of one another.

When I make photos available, I customarily post all photos I take for an event, in three different sizes, and then publish a link to allow those who want to browse or download them free of charge for personal use. This event was no different, so I included a link in my Facebook post to my Masonic Blog post notifying visitors that they could view or download the entire set by following the link.

The next day I tried to log back in to Facebook to check on any problems or comments I might have received, and that's when the real fun began.

"We Suspended Your Account"

I tried to log on, and this is what appeared:

So I tried reading about their objections and couldn't find anything I had violated. As far as I know, I only had one account since I deleted the old account four years prior; I wasn't spamming, engaging in hate speech, violating copyrights, doing anything illegal, hiding my identity, or anything like that. They won't tell you why their algorithm flags an account like this, probably because they don't really know themselves, but that's beside the point.

I filed an "appeal" that consisted of only a headshot, which is all they requested. I had already submitted one when I created the account, so it still isn't clear to me what the head shot proves or disproves.

Now I got a different message:

Digging Through the Dung-Heap

I did check a little deeper using what defective tools they provided. For example, this ambiguous message:

Butd when I tried to "Read in full: Account Integrity", I got:

I think I just heard Kafka chuckling from his grave.

Coup de Grâs

Nothing to do now except wait for the end. A day later, I received the expected:

This is pretty silly for a few reasons:

1. It says my account still does not follow Community Standards on Account Integrity. How could it have changed since I couldn't access it even if I knew what they were objecting to?
2. Of course, they never tell you just what's wrong. That would be too easy, and it might mean that somebody would figure out just how absurd their algorithm is.
3. If you click on the "Read more about account integrity" it takes you to the "Sorry this page is not available right now" screen. Not much help there. (Franz is roaring with laughter now.)

Foxes and Rabbits

Considering that I was reluctant to rejoin Facebook at the start of this excursion, this ending may not be terribly undesirable. After all, I can now use Facebook incompetence as an excuse for not posting photos on Facebook. I feel a little like Brer Rabbit just after he dodged bashing by Brer Fox who conveniently tossed him into his beloved briar patch.

Brer Rabbit designed by www.FreePik.com

Until next time, be well!

MV