It didn’t work but it was fun, i.e. facebooks sucks

Hi RIP friends,

Here’s a sad story about me and facebook: my account has been blocked. No, not the Retire In Progress Page that is still up and running. My individual pseudonym account has been blocked.

Let me show you my facebook setup.

Before blogging, life was easy. I only had my wonderful personal account with hundreds of friends I don’t personally know and millions of pages that I follow which I don’t care about (except when they post cat pictures). A pretty normal facebook life.

That was my entire world:

Then I started this amazing blog, roughly 4 months ago 🙂

I had fun and I wanted to connect more, so I created the amazing facebook public page for my Blog (and discovered how facebook tries very hard to get my money, suggesting me to promote it. Every. Fucking. Day.)

That was my world a month after blogging:

Cool!

…Then I did some stupid things, like posting with my personal account on RIP page or adding likes with my personal accounts instead of RIP page. Plus: I wasn’t able to join groups like Mustachians on Facebook, or Financial independence Europe, I was not able to comment and interact on behalf of my Page most of the time – and obviously did stupid things, like commenting with my personal account instead.

Ok, this should be improved. Things must change, let’s design a new strategy! Here’s few requirements:

• I want to do more social activity on facebook as Mr.RIP.
• I want my privacy and (almost) no link between my individual account and my activity as Mr.RIP.

Few facts:

• Current setting doesn’t work.
• Facebook seems to have relaxed “real name policy”.
  • Yes, it’s a “fact”! I’ve done a deep 5 minutes google search on the net and discovered few articles (1, 2, 3, 4).
    • Btw… is facebook really going to check real names?
      • C’mon… seriously?
        • Am I a nazi-pedo-criminal-troll or a Trump supporter??
          • Who cares about what they say?
            • I have friends with fake names!
              • I’ve seen other bloggers with fake names around!
                • Fuck you!!

So, let’s create my alter ego! Mr. RIP personal facebook account!

Well, the registration form was a little bit painful: “We don’t like your first name ‘Mister’. No, ‘Mr.’ is not going to help, sorry bro“. I ended up naming my alter ego Retire (first name), InProgress (last name). Yeah, a very realistic name!

Things were awesome again! both myself and Retire (Reti for friends) were admin of the awesome RIP Page. Reti joined groups, communities, liked a lot of Personal Finance related pages, met a lot of interesting people and so on.

Here’s my entire world after 2 months of blogging:

Life was awesome back then! But like any other tech savvy person I questioned the setup:

“What if I accidentally make a mistake and post with personal account on my page? Why do I need to have admin rights? Let’s split the world apart and totally disconnect my personal account with Mr. RIP life 😉 Yes, that’s what I’m going to do!”

Let’s do that!

Awesome! Done! Perfect! Nothing will change from now on, this is the final setup!!

Till last Friday.

While I was trying to login into Reti’s account I discovered the account has been “temporarily” blocked and my identity challenged. Initial reactions were anger, then desperation, then hate vs intermittent 4G signal while passing thru the Gotthard Tunnel by train. Worst couple of hours ever.

Here’s current situation:

“RIP, you idiot! You violated facebook guidelines and naming policy. You’re now complaining here like a child? You stupid, you deserved that!”

Yeah, kind of. Just to state the obvious, I’m not (only) complaining with fb here. I just wanted to tell you this story, make you laugh, make you aware of what happened to me and ask you suggestions to avoid similar mistakes in the future.

But before jumping to conclusion please wait! More fun is coming 🙂

This facebook thing ruined my otherwise amazing weekend in Milan, setting first important stone on “Secret Project X”. I spent most of my WiFi time (no data plan in Italy) researching what the hell to do.

Let’s take a deeper look at the revisited list of priorities ad facts:

• I still want to do more social activity on facebook as Mr.RIP.
• I still want my privacy and (ideally) no link between my individual account and my activity as Mr.RIP.
• I would like to retake control of my hanging Retire In Progress Page.
  • Yes, eventually with my personal account.
    • Could this be used by facebook to ban my personal account too?
      • Anyway, I created the hanging page with my personal account so they can already link the 2 accounts together and retaliate against my personal one…
  • In case there’s no way to have it back, I’d create a new one, identical, admin’d by my personal account.
    • But it sucks! Readers will be confused and when searching for the Page on facebook they will find 2 of them. Maybe they will join the one with more likes, i.e. the hanging one.
      • This turbosucks! How to get the old one shut down?
• I would still like to have a pseudonym account for Mr.RIP, but I don’t want to be silenced again, maybe after months or years of social activity.
  • Ideally having Reti’s account back.
    • What’s wrong with a pseudonym account, facebook?? You allow Nazi-Racists-Scammy-Trump supporters communities and I can’t have a pseudonym account?
      • Yes, this one is a complaint and a crybaby lament.
        • Fuck you.

So, after a quick internet search I decided that it would be worth to try to have Reti’s account back. First step is to follow their instructions.

Login, captcha,  captcha, captcha (got a Master Degree in Captcha) and then:

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So, first exploration was worthless. I need an ID. With Photo, name and birth date. I don’t know how’re they going to validate Reti’s photo since there’s no personal picture on that account. Is that mandatory now? Are you asked to have at least an identifiable picture published on facebook? Did I miss something?

Ok, I even tried to fake it, putting together my photo editing skills (none) and tools (MS Paint) and come up with a shitty pathetic attempt. It, obviously, didn’t work.

That’s facebook reply:

Hi,
Thanks for contacting us. It looks like we couldn’t confirm that you’re the owner of this account because you didn’t provide ID with information that matches the details on this account. Please send us a photo or scan of an ID or other documents that match the info on this profile and include:
– Your name
– Your photo
– Your date of birth

[…]

We apologize for any inconvenience, and hope to hear from you soon so we can help.

Thanks,

Wilhelm
Community Operations Team
Facebook

Goodbye Wilson 🙁

 

***Update***

October 26th, 3pm: received a second rejection email from fb:

Hi,

We can’t help with your request because we’ve determined the ID you provided isn’t real.

Facebook requires everyone to represent their authentic identity, so you always know who you’re connecting with. Please respond to this email with a valid ID so that we can help you.

Yeah, depressing. I was going to create a new page, maybe a new account.

When, just 4 hours later…

October 26th, 7pm: tried logging in driven by desperation and instead of receiving a “you cheater, go away” warm welcome, I was friend challenged! I had to identify few friends from their photos – which is, btw, something so silly I can’t believe they trust this procedure. I felt like I was doing an IQ test in Idiocracy.

Once logged in they asked for my real name. So I gave it to them.

Welcome back (for how long?) Jean Arrow.

Jean, thanks for sharing Admin rights on RIP Page with me.

Wilson, you’ll never be alone again!