Dear Facebook

Dear Facebook,

Oh I’m sorry, you pretentious ass.

Dear Meta,

I want to tell you a little story. Once upon a time there was a beautiful warrior (what? this is my story) named Natasha. She was a longtime loyal user of Meta, both the Facebook and the Instagram. She even had side Insta accounts, one for her dogs and one for her thrift shopping, none for inappropriate photos of children. (I swear, this is relevant to the story.)

She was pretty much a model user of both platforms. She even bought things off of your horrible ads. For example, she once bought a sweater that looked cute in the ad with the headline, “I’m always too cold.” But it turned out that wasn’t a headline, it was printed on the actual, extremely cheesy, sweater. And even though our heroine was indeed always too cold, she didn’t want to wear a sweater that says that. It’s like wearing a t-shirt that says, “it’s wine-o’clock somewhere!” even though it is indeed wine-o’clock somewhere, you know? She joined and created groups and secret groups (#bitchsessionforeva). She even “poked” her own mother sometime in the early 2000’s.

She shared so much on Meta. Some people (cough, cough, her husband) might say she shared too much. Baby pics (non-sexy, again, foreshadowing), dog pics, running pics, inspirational quotes about cheese. She raised money for cancer, for LGBQT teens, for gun safety, and for animal shelters. She organized a fundraiser for a homeless friend which resulted in him no longer being homeless. And even when her friends started quitting Facebook, she stayed. She wanted to keep in touch with her old boss Tony, her old boss Rizz, her old swim teammates, and her old swim teammate’s little sister who felt like a kindred spirit. She liked peeping her teenage daughter’s Instagram stories to see what she was up to. She wanted access to almost 20 years of carefully curated photos, from her wedding, from when her kids were babies, from the time she and Misong taught a masterclass on Karaoke at Planet Rose. She had a whole Facebook album called “The reason I married him” which held a single photo of her husband, stroking a life-size cat statue at a wedding while all the other guys were doing normal wedding things. You were the Heath Ledger to her Jake Gyllenhaal, and she wished she knew how to quit you. But in a shocking turn of events, on June 13th, Meta, you quit her. <audible gasp>

And you made it weird. She was staying at an Airbnb in Austin for a shoot for work. When she went to check Instagram, it asked her to sign in, weird. Then, once she signed in, it said you’d suspended her account. Weird again. And the reason why was the weirdest part: “We don’t allow people on Instagram to interact or attempt to interact with children in a sexual manner.” Cool, cool, Meta. That’s okay, because our noble heroine was and remains 100% not into interacting with children in a sexual manner. There was not a shred of doubt in her pure mind that she had done anything remotely close to this. Is there a chance her account was hacked? Could the Airbnb wifi have had a bad actor on it? Was there a Meta AI error? Did you disable our fair lady’s account because she had shared an anti-ICE post by comedian Zach Woods? (And if so, is a parody video mocking ICE for imprisoning people without due process a violation of our “community standards,” and if so, which one?)

Then, Instagram was all, “You can appeal this by taking a 360º selfie video” and our noble warrior was all, “I’m not falling for your phishing attempt,” so she did what any scrappy 21st century girl would, and found a Reddit hack where they provided an AI rotating headshot one could use for exactly this type of shady scenario. Perhaps this was a mistake. Perhaps our tragic heroine should have played by your rules and let her internet security be damned, but she was justifiably wary about giving you a 360º scan of her face. (Have you seen Black Mirror, Meta?) After years of falling for her company’s IT department’s fake gotcha emails, this delicate creature had been conditioned not to do that kind of shit. Apparently, you follow the classic One-Strike-and-You’re-Out Rule, Meta, because after our real-life hero provided her fake face ID, you shut shit down like the alarms had gone off at the Bellagio and Danny Ocean had recently been spotted on the floor. There was never any other avenue with which to recover her account. She never received an email from Facebook or Instagram that explained anything. From then on, if she tries to log onto FB or IG, she’s shot down like an incel on a dating app.

One of the protagonist’s friends called her “the most wholesome” social media presence. She posts mainly photos of her and her friends’ engaging in shenanigans or her kids playing various sports. Sometimes she’d post funny memes about nachos or dogs or social justice. But you know what she didn’t post, not even once? A sexual image of a child. IT’S WEIRD THAT THE STORY EVEN HAS TO MENTION THAT, META. Yet here we are.

Here’s a selection of the last few photos our falsely accused victim shared on FB/IG:

CAPTCHA: Select all squares with sexual images of children

She has now gone 1 month, 1 week, and 1 day without Facebook or Instagram (or Threads, but she’s not that crushed about it, tbh). She hasn’t been able to see Barb’s amazing Spain photos, Rizz’s latest pics of his sweet dog Fox, or how Nina survived glamping at Glastonbury. She narrowly missed out on hearing about ColdplayGate. She missed out on getting showered with love on her milestone <number redacted> birthday. She didn’t get to write her annual tribute to her beloved husband on his birthday. She doesn’t know what Staci, Dina and Tony are up to. She no longer has access to her friend Sandi’s address so she can send her chocolates on Valentine’s Day in memory of their shared friend Big Dave. She hasn’t been able to share that both her children are now taller than her. She is frustrated and mad and sad at the same time. You are really missing out on her not being on your platforms, Meta.

The End.

P.S.
In case it’s not obvious, I’m Natasha. This happened to me. I have since:

• contacted the MA Attorney General (After all, I’m not a huge fan of “We’re required by law to report suspected cases of child sexual exploitation to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.” as I’d rather not be in some national database of pedos.)
• worked with my clients’ contact at Meta, who after some investigation, let me know that, “It looks like you posted something on Instagram that violates our Community Standards…”.
• attempted to fill out a “hacked Facebook account” for online, but when I entered my email address, it said, “There is no account associated with that email address.” THAT’S BECAUSE YOU SUSPENDED MY ACCOUNT, Meta.
• talked to my good friend Matt who works in tech investing and “knows a guy” at Meta (this is still pending)

Short of staging a “Donna Martin graduates!” type protest (“Natasha O’Rourke gets Instagram!”?), I’m kinda at a loss. It honestly feels like I’m stuck in one of those endless phone trees that keeps making you press 8 to return to the main menu and I’m just yelling, “Representative!” and hitting 0 and # but nothing’s working. My frenemies at Reddit have lots of suggestions like filing a civil lawsuit, starting a new, verified Facebook account and sending countless emails from within, and writing various other attorneys general until I find one that actually responds to their constituents. But I don’t really have time for that. I already have a job, Meta, part of which, ironically, is creating ads for Facebook and Instagram. (BTW, your title safe zones are inconsistent and difficult to work with, as are your character counts for ad copy.)

I know it’s not mature of me, but I’m calling you out for violating community standards, Meta.