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Comment by Fabricio20 | Hacker News Reader

If only the reason was hate speech!

This also happened to me, had an account 5 years ago, stopped using it, deleted the account on their website. Last week decided to create it again to prepare to eventually link to Oculus.. Instantly banned. Literally on the "Confirm Your Email" page got redirected to violated the community guidelines. And I'm not even from the US..

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There are similar stories on reddit, with people speculating that the old account actually still existed and the ban was because the new account was imitating an existing account. The idea that they would keep a "deleted" account around seems highly plausible given Facebook's hunger for data.

As far as I understand it, there's three account states you can be in:

- Active = Normal - Deactivated = Deactivated/Not In-Use/Asked to deactivate - Deleted = After asking for deletion, wait (don't log in) for a period of 60? days and your account is deleted.

In my particular scenario, I downloaded my data, went through deletion, waited the period and then confirmed the account was deleted (5y ago).

Unless recently changed, I know my father temporarily re-enabled his Facebook account that had been deactivated for years prior

Deactivation is what Facebook directs everybody to, but there is actually a way to completely delete an account too. With an actually deleted account, you have to create a new one, there isn't a reactivation option.

Given that Facebook creates shadow profiles for "users" who have never had a Facebook account, I wonder what "deleted" really means in terms of Facebook's social graph. Is your identity back to being treated as a shadow profile or is there now an empty hole in the graph?

I filed a GDPR deletion request after it went in to effect. I wonder if such a shadow profile would even be allowed under it.

It sometimes happens if you create account from a suspicious IP address, such as VPN or shared computer at school or cafe. They are trying to prevent account takeovers and fake accounts when some dormant users left weak passwords and got in a leak somewhere. But Facebook is also sometimes a bit too proactive in banning new accounts, because they use this as an opportunity to extract more information from you - you can only unban the account by providing phone number, scan of your ID card etc.. That suits them so they like banning more.

> And I'm not even from the US..

Accessing Facebook from outside the US is likely, through a combination of bad signals, why you tripped the ban hammer. Unfortunately.

The majority of Facebook users access it from outside the US.

That doesn’t preclude them from using it as one factor in their abuse detection models.

Whether it’s a good idea or not, geolocation is a common factor that these models take into account.

I think it's good to add to the discussion here for other HN readers that the reason I mentioned it was that some people are suggesting this is a measure put in-place by facebook to reduce election interference (as it's happening right now in the US). That may be the case, it may also not be since everyone (doesn't matter where from) seems to be getting banned alike.

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