My new Facebook profile

This is a little PSA for those who have been friends with me on Facebook. Unfortunately, the way things seem to many of you might be that I have somehow unfriended you. I wish. The truth is, my original account is disabled and not visible to anyone anymore. If we have Messenger history, you will see it (I can't access old messages anymore!), but if you attempt to send me messages, you'll get an error message. This is nothing personal though - the whole account is disabled, with all the history, and all connections. I have a new account, so please continue reading this post and after that add me as a friend (you'll find me by searching).

Many years ago Facebook had its own authenticator app. I was using that as an added account security. When they shut down the authenticator, I should have quickly changed to another authenticator, but I didn't do anything. I assumed the protection will not be available anymore, but I didn't realize they would keep it intact - connected to the old discontinued product. So, after a while I was stuck - there was no way to edit account security features because it would always ask for a code from the authenticator - which no longer existed. Also, I was unable to login to any new devices. For the past two years I have been hoarding my iPhone as that was the last device that still had access.

Yesterday, my wife Wen got a new phone. When she tried to login to Facebook on her new phone, she couldn't remember her password. She tried to reset the password using her phone number, but that number had been connected to my profile so she ended up attempting to change my password instead (and why was her phone number connected to my account? Couple months ago Facebook's Ad Business unit tried to help restore access to my account and they suggested I should change my phone number as part of the process... well, their attempts failed, but never changed the phone number back to my own).

This was enough for Facebook to log me out of my account on my phone and request authenticator code to log back in. So, I can no longer access the account. Wen tried to fix things by telling Facebook it wasn't me who tried to access the account, but this made things worse - now my old account has completely vanished, and it sounds like it's not visible even to those people who were friends with me previously.

Just like that, 15+ years of post history, friend connections, photos, all just disappeared. I have spent years trying to get the authenticator issue fixed with Facebook, but they are unable to do anything about it, so I don't have much hope the old account will ever be accessible again. The message I get from Facebook employees is that when something like this happens with a Meta account, you need to get help from Mark Zuckerberg or you are out of luck.

Facebook has no customer service for consumers. They have business customer service which is eager to help, but they have no actual power to fix things like this. I've spent hours upon hours on the phone with them, and they have tried all the possible tricks, but nothing can be done. I've heard there is some kind of an elusive way that a Facebook employee could file a request internally and possibly get this escalated to high up in the company, but this would be a lot of work and supposedly frowned upon, so getting anyone to actually do this has not been possible (two years ago I got temporarily locked out for a few weeks, and a friend was able to help back then, but the method used back then doesn't seem to be available anymore).

Sadly, I have no way to access my old friends list, and with more than 1000 friends, there's no way to add everyone back. I was so mortified about this that I wanted to quit using Facebook forever. Wen created this account for me while I was sleeping, trying to give me a happy surprise, but this doesn't replace what was lost. I am deeply unhappy about Facebook and will never trust it again.

Wen added some people randomly as friends, so now Facebook is restricting me from adding anyone for a while. I think it's possible someone reported the new account as suspicious. I agree it may seem that way, but hopefully I will get this established soon.

So, to my friends, if you're reading this:

1. No, I have not unfriended you. My old profile disappeared from your friends list because FB thinks it was compromised, and I have no way of telling them that it's not true.

2. I currently can't add you back because of FB limits, but feel free to add me. I won't post my profile publicly, but you can find me by searching for my name.

3. I don't think I will be very active on Facebook after this, but I want to keep using it as an address book of friends. This whole situation is so absurd. How is it possible that a business with more than 2 billion users has no method of resolving account access issues?