It all started out by my need to replace my little Android A13 phone with a newer, more powerful A17. These are relatively inexpensive phones and I have had good luck with them so far. The battery in the A13 was dying off by the end of the day and there were loads of photos stored in it, so it was getting overwhelmed, apparently.
The A17 came from Consumer Cellular which has been a valued provider for the past 10 years. The transition of data, apps and images hit some rough spots as the transfer was attempting to back up a full phone before sending the data to the new phone. Eventually, we streamlined the process and the images came in from Google’s One-Drive storage. There were new steps to learn about how to operate the A17, but it is just relearning some muscle memory steps. When I tried to log into FACEBOOK on the new phone, suddenly I became a possible bot or hacker in their digital eyes. If you never put a Meta passkey on your profile and devices, anything else from Google is disregarded.
Then you have the “option” of getting a passkey from another device. Tough luck if you only have a cell phone and no other laptops or other devices. There are steps to identify the “cars’ in one of the screening options. Doing that leads you to MORE verification options, They send codes to your email address, but plugging them into the box for the newly sent code gives an error message… Oh, sorry, that didn’t work out… I tried a recovery option where you have to take a selfie, moving your face in and out until the system decides that it is time to move it left and right. After several minutes of vague instructions on-screen it finally says that it is happy and closes the app step. Moments later I receive the disheartening message:
Hi
Bill,
You
recently submitted a video selfie to confirm your identity so you can
get back on Facebook. Unfortunately, the video selfie did not pass
our checks.
If
you want to try again, we’ll either ask you to submit either a new
selfie or a photo ID. This is to keep your account secure. When you
are ready, go to your Facebook login screen to begin.
Thanks,
The
Facebook Team
Facebook
Security
When I tried to log into FACEBOOK on the laptop I was greeted with “Login must be done on a phone app now,” so tough luck, fella! When I tried to log in with the new phone, I was greeted with “We sent a code to your A13 phone” The A13 now has a different phone number, so that message has gone into the wind. The code never arrived at my email address either. I gave up after waiting for 30 minutes.
All the clicks onto the “Did you try to log in?” with affirmative “ YES, it was ME” finally generated a reply that said there were too many attempts and you should delete your cookies and cache. I used CC Cleaner to scrub out the history and cookies and that left me as invisible to FACEBOOK login attempts. Having been on FACEBOOK for over 20 years, I have become “persona non-grata.” I do not exist, and if I do, I must be trying to hack my own account to do some kind of mass destruction of the program and all of its contents.
So, obviously, there are no actual people involved that you can talk to or message about your difficulties. It’s all AI driven now. Recent news is that Meta has shed thousands of employees, any of which might have been able to assist in such a case. So, now were are apparently at the mercy of AI digital responses, which have obviously not been fully trained to function in place of the now-departed humans. Perhaps the AI programs will create their own FACEBOOK profiles and start talking story about its adventures in cyberspace. It’s all QUITE DISGUSTING, isn’t it?
Having been kicked off of FACEBOOK and my 1,000+ followers for several days now, my last hope is that my tech-savvy brother, Jim, will noodle his way into finding some kind of satisfactory method of rejoining Meta’s world of wonder and now disbelief at the downfall of another bit of humanity.
Bill Silver
aka MrHonda
a former FACEBOOK user, until I wasn't....
To be continued, I hope.
