this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2026
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Privacy
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It's been like that for quite a while. I remember deleting all big-tech accounts in 2019, and shortly after, Facebook started requiring login for full public page access. Therefore I created a burner account using a 'this person does not exist' picture, which provided me short-lived access after manual review. For account recovery, I was required to supply additional selfies (or even video-selfies?), but at that point I gave up.
One wit responded to such requests for ID by sending in a picture of an id with pharoh ramsey's mummy's picture, birthdate thousands bc.
I never agreed to give them my personal information. My emails forced me to, locking me out of accounts I needed to access.
I now found alternative email that doesn't need a phone number or linked other email. I am quitting every site that tried to force me to link my phone number, real name, likeness, id, address, anything like that, without a valid reason.
Amazon just demanded I verify my account again, same ip, same account I've used for years. Verifying under the email I abandoned for forcing my phone verification periodically, that would lock me out of my accounts if I lost my phone or it's service. Trying to make good on my threats to quit them too.
Microsoft had me fill this form, to "prove" I was the rightful owner of the account, after some suspicious login-attempts from an African country. The form included fields like: name (I don't think I supplied at creation, or a false one), other email addresses, previous passwords (which potentially yield completely unrelated passwords), etc.; only for the application to be rejected and locking me out of my primary email for a full month. After that outright violation, I immediately switched to Disroot, and haven't had any of said problems ever since. I backup all its contents locally using Thunderbird, and delete the origins from the server afterwards.
Many platforms have this messed up dark pattern, of revoking one's access to a real-world dependencies, unless giving in to the service's demands. Enforcement of 2FA is another one of those "excuses" for this type of misbehavior, and so is bot-detection.
THIS!
I tried this to get an account. This was back in 2021. My account was deleted immediately. Probably a mixture of name and face. Maybe. But F that.
Yeah, I think they employ a pretty sophisticated bot detection algorithm. I vaguely remember there being this 'make 5 friends' objective, or something along those lines, which I had no intention of fulfilling. If a new account, having triggered the manual reviewing process, doesn't adhere to common usage patterns, simply have them supply additional information. Any collateral damage simply means additional data, to be appended to Facebook's self-profiling platform... I mean, what else would one expect when Facebook's first outside investor was Palentir's Peter Thiel?