Facebook builds its profits on the back of our data, so it should treat us with respect, posts Jon Honeyball

We place far too much trust in cloud services. They can be there one minute and then gone in the blink of an eye.

This is, of course, true of any server and it could be argued that cloud services are more reliable than the proverbial box in the corner (BITC). Cloud services usually use customdesigned systems, rack-mounted in data centres that have incredibly stable power and cooling systems. They’re hard to steal and monitored in real-time. That BITC, by contrast, might have blocked fans, a dodgy power supply, no UPS and the cat might get overly excited and pee into it at a most inopportune moment.

However, even a BITC can be exceptionally reliable. Most hardware and software is these days. Like a nicely tended garden, it benefits from some love and attention, including software updates, security checks and so forth, but even the most abused box will tend to keep chugging away.

The difference between the BITC and cloud-hosted rack space is often down to the service provision. It’s fine if you’re using a cloud-hosted virtual machine: it’s often up to you to keep it working and properly backed up and it’s your problem if the data disappears. But that’s not the case with most of the services people use.

As soon as Microsoft offered a cloud Exchange Server, I moved everything onto it. I haven’t regretted it, because it has just worked. I keep local copies of all the important emails, and I use the facilities of my local Synology NAS to keep a local synchronised copy of the cloud service too, which then feeds into my backup and archive strategy.

Things are different with a service like Facebook, which we take for granted. You can command Facebook to give you a download dump of everything it claims to know about you, including all of your posts. This doesn’t include all its internal metrics and friend/relationship wiring, but that’s not surprising. What is surprising is how few of my friends ever take a copy of this information. I only remember to do it every six months or so.

Yesterday was one of those days. For unknown and unexplained reasons, Facebook decided that I couldn’t post to any forums. I could create my own posts, comment on them and comment on posts by my friends. But nothing within a forum. The dialog box was cryptic: it said that I was locked out for several million years, clearly a coding error around large binary numbers. It wasn’t just me, either. It happened at the same time to a number of friends, although there was no logical linkage between them.

I could have accepted that I had been put into the Naughty Bin if I had posted something outside the rules. But, no, there were no “violations” listed on my account.

At this point, I ran hard into a brick wall. I started looking for the support chat forum. Or a live support person I could report the system bug to. But there’s nothing. As far as Facebook was concerned, I could simply go boil my head. It’s only when you need to use support that you notice that it isn’t there.

All I could do was post some fairly random messages via the support page in the hope that someone might read it. In my desperation, I even tried disabling Social Fixer and FB Purity, two essential tools that I use to wrestle Facebook into a manageable platform. This despite the fact they weren’t used by my friends and acquaintances who were also locked out, and nothing had appeared on the respective companies’ support forums about Facebook lockouts.

It was just a waiting game. Would I ever be able to post into a forum ever again? Who knew? Facebook wasn’t telling me, and there was absolutely no route by which I could find out.

Today, some 24 hours later, my account has started working again. There’s no explanation in my account message pages. No response from technical support. As far as Facebook is concerned, it didn’t happen.

This isn’t acceptable. Since it’s clear that companies won’t provide a minimal level of customer support, it’s time to legislate for it. Facebook will claim that the service is free, so I should expect nothing in return, but let’s just take a look at its financials: an $86 billion turnover and $29 billion profit in 2020 clearly shows that the presence and input of the users is worth a lot of money to Facebook.

And therein lies the problem. It won’t get legislated for because the politicians will be lobbied hard to ensure that all is well, that it’s more important for Facebook to be fixing hate speech and protecting the vulnerable rather than providing a basic level of support to its customers. And Facebook is right, that is more important. But that doesn’t preclude doing both.

As far as Facebook was concerned, I could simply go boil my head. It’s only when you need to use support that you notice that it isn’t there