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Comment by AlexandrB | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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