Over the years, I’ve helped a few people regain access to their Facebook accounts. Most all of those times were relatively easy since they were simply forgotten passwords. One was more complicated where a former social media consultant basically vanished and ghosted the business owners. The main challenge for me entailed getting copies of the business license and then a letter from the business owner. The hardest part (for me) was the waiting. It took me a fair bit of googling to track down a way to make the request, and then I had to wait for Facebook to respond. A few minutes of work that took weeks to complete due to slow communications.
So, now, I am working with someone whose account was compromised/taken over by someone else. Facebook’s knowledge base was a series of loops that accomplished nada. Frustrating. I then reached out to a friend who worked at Meta, who let me know that they’d risk termination if they tried to route me outside of the “normal channels”. So, as I value my friend, I opted to not push it. But, man, it’s frustrating. All of this to state that my experience with troubleshooting Meta issues has gone from clunky to infuriating.
So, when I read this article on Engadget, “How small claims court became Meta’s customer service hotline“, I groaned in recognition. I can see why people are using law suits to push Meta to act. I expect that they hope that this level of agrevation will deter people from seeking help and they just give up. However, I doubt that’s really going to be the case. Besides, I would expect that Customer Service Reps are much cheaper than attorneys. This seems to be the most expensive way to navigate this situation.
Since this article is posted on a major blog, I wonder if more people will seek Meta customer service via small claims court. Perhaps it will become painful enough for Meta to finally staff their customer service department adequately. Perhaps…
This strikes me as an element of Cory Doctrow’s “Enshittification”. In particular, the notion of “too big to care“. For so many folks, Facebook is an 800 pound gorilla. And they know it and are hard pressed to care.