I posted this on the facebook lemmy, but I guess there’s no one there. So maybe I can get help here.
Where I live (Australia), specially in smaller towns, facebook is a requirement. Gumtree is dead, so any second hand products, room rental and even jobs are done only through facebook.
I tried a few times creating a fake account but quickly they lock my account, even if I don’t use it. I’m not sure how they know my data is fake, but I’d rather smash my face on the wall than giving zuckeberg any personal info.
Is there any way? Any specific things I need to look for when creating an account? I tried using believable names and email, but no luck…
This is hard for me. I absolutely hate facebook and I want it to die. But I have to accept that I’m surrounded by people who don’t care if they are ####### over by an american billionaire, and I have to conform if I want to interact with them. So any help is appreciated.
More specifically, I wanted to find second hand objects, jobs and maybe rent a room. All of which seems to be a facebook only thing, unfortunately.
Also, is there like a proxy website where I can do that without going to the actual facebook? Like youtube, instagram and others have websites like this. But when I search for “facebook proxy” I only find people so desperate to use it that they want to circumvent work or school networks that block it.
Edit: following recommendations, I made an account with a burner number I had here (I have a few usually just in case). I’ll update if that still gets me banned. Thanks for all replies!
You must log in or register to comment.
I did it without a VPN, used a spam email account I made and a burner sim card I bought once.
So FB has my IP and a burner phone number, I use it only when I need it and only on the browser (no app)
This works for me and I think the data they get is acceptable.
So the phone is the difference that makes it work?
Did you use a fake name, do you have friends on it? If I go down that path I would want to make sure I have all ingredients for it to work.
yeah it’s the phone number. I remember when I made account after like a day they were like “You’re suspended unless you show us a phone number” so I just bought for a few dollars a burner SIM card in a different city so it’s not even associated with me too much, and put it in a phone and just received SMS confirmed that my account is legit and that’s it.
I used a fake name, no profile picture, no friends, and the email was from ProtonMail.
Oh… that’s bad. But I always imagined that that might do it. I just don’t know if I need them enough to go that far.
Unfortunately I think I know the answer and I’m not wanting to face it…
I wish there was something I could donate to help destroy facebook. I don’t want to give them 1cent, but I would pay a few thousand dollars if I thought I had a chance of removing its influence from my life.
I tried this then it wanted me to do a verification video of my face.
Ai then? 😉
There is not. I tried to create one just for testing stuff a while back and the blocked me and my IP. They wanted to see my ID.
What a fu234ing fu#$ cun@# ret!@# pieces of !#@ That pisses me of so much! The nerve! It happened to me too. A shitty website I never wanted to use and they behave as if they are the most important and necessary government agency.
Which… because of people’s stupidity, they really are now… I don’t hate them as much as I hate the people that gave them this power.
Both make me angry, the fact that FB asks for all this personal information and the fact that people give in to them.
I feel your pain. I too am considering creating an account simply because it is needed for work and family stuff.
Here you can have a messenger account without having facebook but even that seem to be performing badly, because i dont have facebook. People have trouble finding me and I can’t always join group chats.
I have considered using an old phone just for Facebook and getting an extra phone number to verify the account with. Then only use Facebook through that device and leave it at home. Maybe I’ll have to give Facebook my info but can as well prohibit then from tracking me
Here the government requires full privacy breach for buying a sim (because, of course, the terrorists and stuff). That with the inevitable hack that happens from time to time on telcoms it’s just a matter of time of them spreading all the details the telcom have on me.
I think things will have to get worse for me to consider that option. But I am thinking about it. Still… there’s no guarantee they won’t block me since I won’t use my real name or have any “friends” on it. I think if your account will clearly not give them money, they will block it.
Yeah, this is one of the companies that I trust to be doing shady stuff. Especially after the Pay or Ok move they did for 1½ year ago, forcing people to either pay a crazy subscription fee to avoid targeted ads, (for me it was close to €30 a month), or accept them. before that, you could opt out of targeted ads (but not tracking).
That said, even when paying a subscription, they would still track you, and still run suggested content, even from commercial accounts.
I am happy to pay for useful services to companies I trust, and facebook is possibly the last one on the list. Even if they told me they don’t track me I wouldn’t believe. Not they would be even allowed not to, being an american company…
I have filed a GDPR complaint about Facebook with my local data authority, because Facebook deleted my account, but still send me newsletters suggesting people to follow. I filed it January 2024 and only after 10 months did the complain get forwarded to Ireland who, because of some new rule, now has to handle the complaint. It will take for ever, but i don’t really care
Here in the united states of the south privacy laws are foreign concepts. But even if we had laws I wouldn’t trust it. What’s stopping them from making a backup of the data, deleting from the main server and saying “there, I did it”?
To me once the company gets your info, you lost it. But to still receive spam is a problem. I had the same issue with companies here. I would like to at least be removed from their spam list.
The EU have made laws regarding the right to be forgotten. If the companies breach this, they face huge fines, as a percentage of their overall earnings. That said, I am loosing faith in how often they get enforced and how easily you can complain to the authorities about it.
Also, i am in doubt of how much data they can actually maintain, while anonymizing it. So they may keep your data, but remove any personal link to you as a person.
Specially with servers in the US I wouldn’t be too hopeful about it. Or at all.
But even if the server is in europe, if I were facebook I would certainly keep a room of backups labeled something else just in case. Unlikely fines in the present and possibly massive profit in the future for whatever reason. Why not? The thing is that no one should expect that info uploaded to the internet can be ever really deleted. There should be campaigns to make people more aware of that. As in “we made these laws to protect you, but the only real protection comes from you”.
You can buy accounts.
Where?
I think there would be a good chance they would know I’m not the original owner, with all the changed behaviour, and then they would still block me.
But it’s something I didn’t think about… doesn’t seem like a good option, but an option still…
There’s a bunch of places if you search. Facebook doesn’t give a crap about it.
Yeah, after reading your post I searched and found a few. All looking super dodgy.
I’m sure they don’t care about people selling the account. However I get the account, as long as they can profit from me it’s all they would care. But I think it would go back to the initial reason they blocked me, because it doesn’t seem that I would be profitable.
So I’m not sure if going through one of those dodgy websites and buying that would not get the same result…
I’ve had a fake account for going on 2 decades at this point, for a long time it coexisted with my regular account before I deleted that.
I have no idea how it hasn’t been flagged as fake yet.
I’ve changed the name on it and all of my information a couple of times, I have like 2 pictures, both just stolen from Google image searches for things like “dude” and “guy with computer”
For a little while I used it for some memes and shitposting and occasionally tagged it from my main account.
At one point I unfriended just about everyone I actually know and added a bunch of randos from around the world.
For the last 10+ years I don’t think I’ve actually used it to post, like, comment, or follow anything. Nowadays I just use it to log in and see what various pages I want to follow are posting.
At this point I think I’m mostly coasting on the account age being old enough that they assume I must be a real person. It probably also helps that the account has never really done anything offensive to warrant anyone actually looking into it.
With the proxy websites, it’s more of an alternative frontend where you still need an account on the platform.
What might be happening is
- your device or IP address is flagged from your previous attempts
- they’ve connected it to your real name / shadow profile somehow
So if you really need to use it and there’s no alternative, you could do one of
-
make the real account, ideally from a privacy friendly browser, and give the absolute minimum info you can. Name and email, no profile image, privacy settings to max
-
make an account on a new device / wifi network, and have it be believable for the kind of person joining Facebook for the first time. I haven’t tried this myself but I’ve heard it mentioned before
Whether you made an account or not, you can keep an eye out for alternatives. Over here there are a few alternatives, and one of them (Karrot) has been growing in popularity
It might enshitify at some point, but it’s been nice so far
Social websites are only worth the people using it. Here it’s only facebook unfortunately. There used to be gumtree which was great, but now it’s dead.
But so, do I need to use my real name? I imagine they have all sort of features to know if you are fake, and I don’t know what those rules are. I imagine it depends a lot on many things, like location, operating system, etc. I use Linux and Firefox, and just from that they probably know there’s a higher chance that I’m someone who hates facebook and might try to make a fake account.
I’ve done from maybe 3 different devices, so I don’t think that’s what fixes it.
They always let me make the account and use it. But on the next day, or even the same day, they block it.
Oh, but what are the proxy websites? That would already be a nice thing to know. I know I would have to log in on them, but I don’t know if facebook even allows a third party website to log people on.
Yes it’s hard to tell what they’re looking at, but I imagine the less info they can collect from your device the better?
I usually lookup ‘alternative frontends’ and then find a list like this on github type sites. They go out of date often
https://github.com/mendel5/alternative-front-ends?tab=readme-ov-file#facebook
Thanks for that link, there seems to be a lot of useful stuff there! I can see teddit, which haven’t worked for a long time. But still interesting.
The less info they can collect on me, the less profitable I am and most likely to be blocked, I imagine. My objective and facebook’s objective are in direct conflict. Not giving them info and still interacting to people who use it is the challenge.
