Friday Frustrations

Well, I was going to try and do a quick 'Random Movie Trailer' today, but it appears that some of the films I watch are so obscure that nobody has ever uploaded a trailer for them.  Anywhere.  Neither of the films I was considering are substantial enough to warrant a longer piece, plus I simply don't have time to work up a longer piece, so I'm left with no planned post for today.  The reason I just don't have time to write anything longer is because I've had to waste so much time trying to sort out the mess that Facebook made of my accounts earlier today.  Basically, they deactivated both my account and The Sleaze's page because their 'software' had detected 'suspicious activity' which flagged them as having been hacked. Which they hadn't.  They never have been.  So I had to jump through hoops to get them reactivated, which Facebook made as difficult as possible. From the outset, they wouldn't let me even attempt to start the process on the laptop I actually had up and running, (my 'upstairs' laptop), forcing me to log onto my main laptop and carry out the process there.  Which seems bloody stupid as I was trying to log on using a logged in Firefox browser on both, which, with every other sane and rational site, synchronises my logins across the various sites I use.  But, hey, this is Facebook we're talking about.  Or rather Meta, as I was reminded when I tried to access my Instagram account only to be confronted with some gibberish about 'automated activity' having been detected on the account.  To which the response was 'fuck off'.  Luckily, I was easily able to dismiss that shit.

But, despite having access to my accounts back, the problems continued.  I now find that I'm prevented from logging in on any other device (despite these being devices I've previously 'verified' with Facebook).  An attempt to log in to the app on my Android phone, for instance, resulted in being sent to a screen and told to enter the code that had been sent to my What's App number.  I don't have a What's Up number.  I've never used the bloody app and have no intention of doing so.  In the event, the code was emailed to my verified email address.  Great, I thought, we're nearly there!  Oh foolish man that I am!  The code was, of course, rejected.  So I requested another one.  It sent me the exact same code, which was again rejected as being incorrect.  I then found myself trapped in a loop of requesting new codes, getting the same one, having it rejected, requesting a new - well, you get the idea.  So I gave up and accepted that from now on, I can't access Facebook on my phone.  But at least I got further there than I did on my other devices, where it went into a loop of simply saying there was an error and to try again, over and over.  Facebook's own help pages offer no useful advice, which is hardly a surprise.  They aren't in the business of actually helping their customers.   The irony is that the 'suspect activity' nonsense was doubtless triggered by my earlier attempts to sort out Facebook's previous idiocy regarding The Sleaze's page, which they suddenly decided wasn't eligible for recommendations to other users anymore.  Not that I was aware that they were recommending it, but it seemed concerning because it vaguely alluded to 'community standards' not being observed.  Except that, on investigation, I found that their own dashboard checks show that there are no problems with the page's contents!  After much arsing around and time-wasting, I came to the conclusion that it is simply down to the fact that, not unreasonably I think, I refuse to include my address and phone number on the publicly available contact information for the page!  I mean, why should any reader of the page need my personal details?  So they can harass me with nuisance calls and hate mail if they don't like what they read?  Locate my house and throw bricks through the windows?  Does Meta really think that I'm insane enough to endanger my safety by publishing such information?  So, as I'm never going to put such information out there, my recommendations remain suspended.  In which case Meta can just go fuck themselves.