Do I exist? I think I do.
Well for those who know me, Facebook was annoyed with me after I posted a video of me dancing “in fetish gear” on the Wasteland party. My account was restricted from Monday 2 December onwards and after some clumsy interactions this situation seemed to tighten and escalate. When all this started happening I was distracted with real life stuff (…”love“…) so my response at the time was disinterested and haphazzard, but in the days between 2 December and now (6 december) I had a series of incongruent and inconsistent interactions with facebook.
The problem was twofold – first facebook had received a content complaint (thanks to whomever filed the report) over the incident and gave ma a 7 day posting ban and a warning. While being subjected to that warning Facebook then automatically (?) actived some kind of identification procedure. As part of a legal transitioning process I had sought name change some years earlier. My previous birth name is something I want as little to do with as possible (and with damn good reasons, if you had known my dad), and my new legal name is Khannea Suntzu. Facebook demanded immediate identification, and I offered them this identification by means of a copy of my passport in which things like BSN where blocked out (as the Dutch government insists I do since relegating BSN carries a high risk of identity fraud).
Facebook is a high-turnover, low-empathy, insanely successful entity. Facebook is no longer just some corporation offering a face book, it has evolved in to a public utility on which lives can be argued to depend. I can also argued that it won’t be long before it becomes necessary for some democratic entity has to break-up or nationalize Facebook to protect its citizens. This giant machine currently collects data from its users and has a stake in presenting itself as a viciously societally conformist apparatus of data harvesting. A lot of terrifying things have been repeatedly said about Facebook in the past. Facebook does in fact sell data about its users to the most macabre aspects of US goverments and facebook does support for money brutally ruthless regimen world wide. Facebook makes money on the collection of the most private aspects of the lives of billions of people world wide, and these extreme types of corporate predation have been detailed in many places world wide.
To run this behemoth Facebook has a help desk for user issues, and in crowd management Facebook systematically quells eccentrics, alternative lifestyles, the desire for personal expression, political activism. These values are reflected by the intense conformist conservatism of Facebook employees – these people inhabit a corporate ivory tower that is for them unassailable to criticism, alternative culture, alternate lifestyle, the desire for freedom, privacy or otherwise. To work at Facebook comes with a mental framework of disregard and disinterest. The people who work at Facebook are a very curious breed of human beings that consent to this.
Strangely enough the vast majority of Facebook users remains oblivious to all this and accepts this.
My attempts to get through this bureaucratic behemoth were bewildering. At Monday 2 December facebook blocked my account. As it appears someone in a particular discussion about my post about the Wasteland party expressed distaste. I have the feeling the person who filed the complained was a well-known fetishist in the party scene. She expressed great concern about posting Wasteland pics in general so the conclusion comes easy she filed a so-called abuse report with Facebook. Whatever the case my video was flagged and led to a 7 day ban for undesirable content. I assumed I’d have a 7 day ban and that would be the end of it, but I was wrong. Facebook demanded a photo ID. And that’s where things completely spiraled out of control. When I submitted by photo ID, Facebook kept rejecting it over the span of several days. It didn’t explain why it rejected my ID, just that it was not a legal ID. In a confusing sequence of formulaic email replies I got from facebook I understood some of the disjointed, aloof, distant and hostile consumer help desk of Facebook. People that work at Facebook appear to have the disinterest as cattle ranchers and butchers. Facebook users are a form of data meat to them, and little else. Users aren’t “people”, they are data commodities.
I had some hope Thursday when I received this reply.
Hi Khannea,
It looks like your account was suspended by mistake. I’m so sorry for the inconvenience. You should now be able to log in. If you have any issues getting back into your account, please let me know.
View updates from your support dashboard: https://fb.me/250IScwwm6wxbLm
Thanks,
Amie
Community Operations
Let’s offer some backgrounds that may have led to this. Ten years ago legally I was male. I find acknowledging that demeaning. I started transitioning from male to female, “for what it is worth”, and for years people around me didn’t have a clue what was secretly happening in my private life. It took a long time to open up about this – Nobody could see what was inside me and only when I returned from the US in early 2011 from attending the LGBT conference Creating Change in Minneapolis, guest of the VenusPlusX political lobby in Washington DC did I formally transition in to a so-called Real Life Experience and since 2009 I was more or less exclusively using the name Khannea Suntzu (mostly ignoring my born legal lastname). Up until 2010 I used a facebook account with my legal name, but then I closed that. Since 2006 I primarily used the account with the name Khannea SunTzu.
Now here’s where it gets sinister.
So establish some facts.
1. My name used to be ABC DEF
2. My current name is now Khannea Suntzu DEF
4. I am a transsexual in full treatment at the VU in Amsterdam
5. My passport now reads Female
6. I am preoperative (as may be forensically induced from the Wasteland video I shared)
So a few years ago, I surmise somewhere in 2009, I close the facebook and google accounts that referred to the names ABC DEF. A while later (2011?) I tried opening a random name Facebook account. Guess what happened? Years after closing the ABC DEF accounts there it was on the screen. Facebook disallowed me to create just any name and it actively prompted me to create an account in the name ABC DEF. Literally, years after closing respective facebook and gmail accounts and abandoning the name in every aspect of my life, there was the corporate Behemoth Facebook reminding me they assumed I was not who I was. I wasn’t the new me – Facebook simply didn’t care about who I wanted to be – my new legal identity didn’t matter to Facebook. It still somehow maintained a shadow profile and it aggressively tried asserting this formerly male shadow profile on to my new female existence. I shed a few tears when that happened.
Let’s go back to Monday 2 December. I found my account inaccessible.
Hi,
We can’t give you access to this account or continue to process your request because we haven’t received an
acceptable ID that matches the information listed on the account.
The account will remain locked as a security precaution. While it’s locked it won’t be visible on Facebook or appear
in search. We’re sorry for any inconvenience this causes, but this decision is final.
View updates from your support dashboard: https://fb.me/1LyyRcfpNxeEfug
Thanks,
Ron
Community Operations
Facebook “banhammered” me on 3 december. They said, “the decission is final”. 2 days later they reversed the decission. I wasn’t even outraged, just sickened. I was in close contact during all this – my Friends Amanda Stoel and Ze Moo (they are still both on Facebook) started petitions, a virulent community response, and at this time I feel safe to conclude hundreds of people have started protesting me being banned. Friends at the politically inclined Facebook group Zero State did the same, as did large amounts of people that were perplexed my account data and 8 years of posts had suddenly evaporated into invisibility.
Bear in mind I have been extremely active on Facebook. I manage dozens of groups as Moderator, many groups are political in nature. And that opens a conceptual can of worms. I am active in two groups – Facebook Critique and Facebook Kritiek. I manage a group expressing criticism with Israeli policies. I manage a group expressing distaste with fascism in US society. Likewise a group criticizing lack of democracy in the Arab world. And it goes on and on. Let me list groups I am either heavily posting, moderating, co-moderating. managing or have created – Posthuman Network. Singularity Network. Humanity+. Zero State. TechnoGaianism. The Maximum Income Institute. H+ Politics. The Techno-Idealist Groups Hub. Transhuman Sexuality and Reproduction. Bridge One. Skefia. A group advocating extradition of George W. Bush to the international court of the Hague. A transgender rights group called Venus.Plus.X. A group demanding the repatriation of Dutch gold from US banks. A group protesting slavery and forced labour in Dutch society. A group advocating Thorium as an energy source. A group demanding that Facebook pays its most active content providers. A group demanding organized crime is treated as terrorism. A group listing stupid mistakes Dutch politicians make. I posted heavily in numerous groups on Second Life, Augmented Reality and Virtual Worlds. Groups such as Life Extension, The Longevity Party Netherlands, Asteroid Mining, Leeward Space Exploration group, Lunar Platinum Mining, The Mars Society, Mars Settlement Research Organisation, OpenLuna Foundation, Spac-Based Solar (Or SBPS), Space Colonization, Space Settlement Network, The Coalition for Space Exploration, World Space Forum, The Jovian Society, Space and Universe, Existential Growth, The community page for the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, Futurists United, SpaceX, Techno-Optimism, The Next Edge, Terasem, Turing Church group.
That’s what I have listed – there are more groups. And bear in mind, all my posts of eight years have now been made functionally invisible. In other words, Facebook may have had incentive to silence my voice and has found rational to use a contrived incident (a video of me dancing on Wasteland dressed in Latex fetish gear) to surgically eradicate my voice of eight years of political activism, protest, technological advocacy and affirmation of rights. And yes, I used Facebook to criticize Facebook. I can imagine that Facebook may have had perceived a certain desirability to block me.
Facebook can do that. There’s no functional means of appeal. There’s no means to effectively communicate with facebook. Facebook faces no legal constraints, doesn’t care about dissent and governs it’s particular corporate have with absolute and irrevocable use of force.
When writing this it’s 6 december. So where are we now? I absolutely have no clue. Facebook has in its possession a copy of my identification (with BSN blurred) and for some intricately arcane reason they are not accepting such and such as real – and they do not provide any explanation why they do not accept this. Facebook at least danced back and forth in to the “irreversible ban” stage, one day after it initiated it (read above) and I can only surmize FB is in some bewilderingly interdepartmental holding pattern of some middle echelon process.
What can I do? I have no recourse that spend a large percentage of the time I would have otherwise spent posting on Facebook to posting articles, protests, warnings against Facebook. I was spending several hours a day posting contributions on Facebook, and since I can’t do that now I have several hours a day to spare attacking Facebook, attacking what may be argued to be a particularly sinister form of censorship and anything related to this situation.
I remain confident my peer commnunity that is still wandering the walled garden paradise of Facebook will support me inside and out.
But let’s face the fact – I am in reality dedicating my time and energy to a very large degree on activism. For me Facebook has been a critical part of my social dimension for no less than eight years. I always concluded I was “doing the best thing I could” under the circumstances.
I must increasingly conclude Facebook is little short of a societal cancer at this stage, run by the most corrupt people in the world. Sadly we live in a compromised world where a video of me dancing in Latex on a Fetish party can be leveraged by this organization to get rid of me.
What can you do
Like many other people indicated to me – this ban is pretty bizarre. It is also quite severe. Losing my 1500 friend, 500 follower, 50+ group social context is nothing short of abusive. If it can happen to me, it is more than likely that it can happen to you. If it happens to you one day in the future chances are you will just as powerless to respond or protest. Facebook maintains absolutely irreversible rights to eradicate a significant part of the social lives of its subjects. I encourage you to join respective group on facebook “facebook critique” and join other initiatives to democratize Facebook. But most of all, you can protest my ban, by heading out to the various Facebook abuse sections. There are various ways to remind Facebook I have consistently contributed to content and political discourse there. You can do so today, and if sufficient people do so I may have a shot at this ban getting reversed. I’d really appreciate your support in this. The case is numbered at FB as Case #220442146. Thee’s also a group #FreeKhannea and #SheCantBreath. I havent seen either group.
This is the situation per 6 december 2014.
Update 4AM Sunday, 7 December
Hi Khannea,
It looks like your account was suspended by mistake. I’m so sorry for the inconvenience. You should now be able to log in. If you have any issues getting back into your account, please let me know.
View updates from your support dashboard: https://fb.me/1J8PGdZZjNuu7kF
Thanks,
Michael
Community Operations
Aaaand
Hi Khannea,
Your account has been permanently disabled for violating Facebook’s Terms. We will not reactivate it for any reason.
This will be our last email regarding your account. For more information about our policies, please read the Facebook Community Standards:
https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards/
View updates from your support dashboard: https://fb.me/1P0NPvaHj2E25ht
Thanks,
The Facebook Team
Kiara
Community Operations
Update Sunday 7 December
I requested my eight years worth of Facebook data from facebook on suggestion of David Orban. This is the link to follow for a data access request: https://www.facebook.com/help/103846099705922
This is the form: https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/166828260073047
And I also emailed them via datarequests@support.facebook.com. I’ll keep anyone appraised how that works out.
Hi,
We have received your request for your personal data. To get access to your personal data, you must log on to Facebook. If you do not have access to your Facebook account because your email address and Facebook password do not work to log in, you must follow the instructions you see when you try to log in. Once you’ve logged into your account, you can use our convenient self-service tool to access your data any time, free of charge. To access the self-service tool:
1. Click the account menu at the top right of any Facebook page
2. Choose Account Settings
3. Click the link at the bottom of the page “Download a copy of your Facebook data”
Note: We have several measures in place to ensure the security of your information, and will require you to confirm your identity to complete the process and access your account information.
Your downloaded file may contain sensitive information. You should keep it secure and take precautions when storing, sending or uploading it to any other services.
Thanks for contacting Facebook,
Curious enough my data request opened up my account again for passport verification. Clearly this infrastructure is full of holes and my account is in there somewhere, in a faint state of cryonic suspension. I am curious to see how they will respond to this new situation. A data request should have interesting implications.
Update Monday 8 December
Reducing social media activity substantially for a few weeks. Switching focus to Google+, Diaspora and Ello. I won’\t ever be able to convince anyone to leave FB, but at this stage it is my sincerest recommendation. This corporate entity is dangerous for you.
Update Monday 8 December
Hi Khannea,
Thanks for confirming your identity. You should now have full access to your account again.
If you can’t log into your account, please try resetting your password using the “Forgot your password?” link on the Facebook login screen to create a new password. Learn more in the Help Center:
https://www.facebook.com/help/213395615347144/?ref=cr
Please also note that you’ve been temporarily blocked from posting on Facebook for 7 days. This means you when you log in, you’ll be able to view posts, but you won’t be able to comment on them or create your own until the block is lifted. To help prevent this type of block from happening again, please review and follow the Facebook Community Standards:
https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards
Keep in mind that people who repeatedly don’t follow the Community Standards could permanently lose access to their Facebook account.
Thanks,
Nate
Community Operations
Yah I noticed that nate.
Backgrounds
* http://allfacebook.com/facebook-lawsuit-banne_b18245
* Facebook Banned Me! Worst. Week. Ever.
*