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Comment by dclaw | Hacker News Reader

I spent the better part of 2019 and early 2020 recovering my dead dog's facebook account so I could get some photos off of it and close it properly. I hadn't used it in like 4-5 years, and had to re-purchase the domain name used so I could get emails from them. What a nightmare. They treated him like he was a human, and wouldn't accept a photo of the dog, his county-registered license, or anything else. After trying for over 8 months, mysteriously the account got unlocked with no explanation. #DeleteFacebook

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Why do you have a facebook account for your dog anyways?

In a long-lost age, the internet used to be for fun. In 2006 the guys in our dorm made a Facebook account for the decorative plastic pumpkin that we drank beer out of.

Because they wanted to? Not sure why it matters.

Is it even allowed by the terms of service to create accounts that are not for humans?

Once upon a couple decades ago, Facebook's terms of service didn't require you to be a human.

And even if you're not a human, how would Facebook prove it?

And even if Facebook could prove that you are not human, what right do they have to deny you what they clearly claim is yours ("your" photos)?

If the terms of service don’t allow you to create a Facebook account for a dog, is it reasonable to expect them to accommodate recovery when you do so anyway?

Well, that wasn't always the case. If they change the terms of service to disallow having a non-human account, that doesn't change the fact that it still exists. By the time I deleted my own personal facebook account, I hadn't used the dog account in years anyway. It only became an issue when the dog died. Also, I did nothing wrong to lock the account, it was their idiotic methods that caused the issue, not the fact that the account was actually for a dog.

> If the terms of service don’t allow you to create a Facebook account for a dog, is it reasonable to expect them to accommodate recovery when you do so anyway?

First, if the terms of service didn't have any exclusion against a dog then absolutely yes it's reasonable to expect them to accommodate recovery when you do so.

Second, if the terms of service explicitly state that you own anything then is it reasonable that they deny you your owership? We're talking about HUMANS here. If a business states that you are not permitted to enter their building but you do so anyway, and in doing so you lost your wallet, then is it reasonable to expect them to return it to you? Yes it absofuckinglutely is. This is no different whatsoever.

Third, terms of services are not a contract because nobody reads them. A contract specifically requires that both parties understand and comprehend the terms of the contract. Websites provide services despite the fact that 99% of people do not understand the terms presented. You're deluding yourself if you think it's reasonable to think that everyone fully understands "Facebook is not a place for pictures of my dog".

Looks like it's to post pictures of the dog.

Why shouldn't one crate an account for a dog?

Dogs are Facebook's least toxic posters.

On an unrelated thought, it used to be that on the internet nobody knew you were a dog...

https://stallman.org/images/dog.jpg

Friend of mine have an IG account for their kitten, and they post in a form of a journal from the cats perspective.

Might seem silly to some and only have two followers but they have fun and it doesn't harm anyone.

So they could be angry at people for not accepting friend requests from their dog.

Same happened to me except I didn't send any ID or pictures or anything. I just said I guess I'm done with FB, then got an email saying my account was unlocked about 2 months later.

I don't think FB actually has a fraud system outside of "wait a long time" so its not worth it to hackers.

Realistically, we all know that when we sign up a Facebook account if we link it to an email address that is the easiest way to recover an account if the event of a forgotten password.

If you haven't logged into the account or the email address long enough that the email address domain expired. Then that's poor planning and isn't necessarily a problem with Facebook. I'd say most of my online accounts that don't have 2FA would be difficult to reset passwords for if I lost access to my email account.

If I signed up to a Facebook account and put my dogs name on it, how would Facebook ever know who human the owner is?

Facebook allows pages for pets, but not user profiles.

People use FB as a photo backup service?

Yes, lots of people have at least some of their photos only stored on FB and have no backups, so FB ends up being their de facto "photo backup service".

Obviously you should routinely backup your data, yet here we are. Last year I noticed that most of the photo albums I shared on FB over the years just disappeared. They were not hidden by some app setting, nor temporarily unavailable, the data dump FB offers has no trace they even ever existed. The data was gone. I reported the issue but never got any answer. Thankfully I had the original photos on my old desktop. So when your data may randomly vanish, do backups, just my two cents.

It isn't a great backup service, but it is useful. Every day they give me a x years ago you shared - normally a picture of my kids doing something cute that I forgot about until then. Brings a big smile to my face.

You have to be careful how you use Facebook. I've gotten aggressive about blocking all from every single group and cute kitten post. Facebook is a great way to share pictures with my friends and family. For news, jokes, buying/selling, and learning about my hobbies it is useless (because the algorithm doesn't show me everything). As a rules, if it isn't something you wouldn't mark as personal information with limited distribution it shouldn't be on Facebook. (this also implies Facebook needs high security)

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