This was the week that was…

It started with my being banned from Facebook. No explanation why. No appeal allowed. And before you think, “Wowsers. What on earth has she done?” -  Meta won’t deign to tell me what I did, which means one of three or four things: The first:

• I was hacked and never knew it and the hacker posted something so lewd/objectionable that the Facebook AI took down without a single one of my almost 2500 F’book friends seeing it.

Frankly, this is crazily unlikely. The second possibility:

• I rejected/blocked too many ads. On Reddit, where there is a group dedicated to the 100,000 plus souls Meta has recently banned for no good reason, there’s a theory going round to this effect.

Now I am very very good at rejecting ads. Facebook is mostly ads these days, of course, but what kills me is that their famous algorithms get it sooooooooooooo hysterically wrong. Take me, for example, a middle-aged, middle-class, middling-intelligent London female.

NOT exactly the type to be wild to purchase tickets to ear-splitting rock shows OR knitting aids for women aged (conservatively) 110. For this reason – hey,  I was being helpful – I was training the algorithm! – “not interested” became my catchphrase. I must’ve trashed about 95 F’book ads every time I showed up.

Which isn’t to say that every ad was badly targeted – here to tell you, if there are any of you people are looking for a facelift in a bottle, that Ayura skincare is CRAZY-GOOD!!!! – I discovered it in a Facebook ad and am now a Ayura junkie (that Kesaradi face oil!!!!!😊)

 But. The fact remains that most of Facebook’s ads have become impossibly intrusive over the past eighteen months or so. And my rejection of 99.99% of their ads every other day might perhaps have annoyed the bots. The third possibility:

• Being banned for politics. A load of well-meaning Redditors (ALSO banned without either explanation OR appeal) are absolutely convinced that they were banned for saying rude things about Trump. The only trouble with this theory is that there are easily just as many Trump supporters who claim that they’ve been banned for saying nice things about Trump... So, I’m not buying it.

It also can’t apply to me, because I don’t do political posts. I don’t go there. You want my political opinions, you can whistle for them.

This is why the fourth possibility is probably the likeliest: Facebook’s AI bots decided that I was a bot.

Now, it’s common knowledge that Meta's gone overboard on AI. It's perfectly poss. that the bots – now in charge –  decided that I was One of Them. And they have been programmed to EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE all bots NOT employed to bot for  F’book itself.

Anyway, when curtly informed that I had to verify myself on Facebook – and that the only way to do this was by submitting a video of myself –  I refused.

Well, hey, we’ve all heard how social media harvests images in order to impersonate people, right? So when Facebook’s bots asked me to prove that I wasn’t a bot by videoing my face from every angle, I first checked it wasn’t a scam. When I reluctantly accepted that it was really Meta/Facebook, I still refused, citing privacy concerns, as is my right under European law.

But when they insisted – this time they threatened me – I gave in. And as I complied, videoing my face from every angle, I thought: ‘Here’s where I’ll get my identity swiped.’ (This is still extremely likely. Has happened before, and then without access to my face – such as it is, God knows – from every angle.)

Anyway, as foreshadowed, I complied in the end, and press “send” on the video. Was perma-banned from F’book less than fifteen minutes later. After 18 blameless years, not a joke.

Yeah, those bots clearly ‘thought’ long and hard. Not.

As some Meta-banned Redditors have suggested, it’s almost as if the video selfie was what Meta had been really after, all along. Having bullied me into that – and yes, I do mean bullied – they wasted zero time in pulling the plug.

"Why don’t you put in a formal appeal? " my friends all chorused. "You have 180 days," they mostly added, helpfully.

Sadly, this was once actually true… but that was then, and this is now. Meta don’t even pretend to allow appeals anymore. No… with the bots in control, once it’s game over, it’s game over. Some redditeers have actually sued Meta in the US courts and been reinstated, but I’m not going there.

My POV:  They don’t deserve to have me. If that’s the way that their AI bots intend to treat real, honest-to-God people… I’m outta here.

Meta did send me a list of my contacts – European law insists upon this, so they deserve zero credit for it – but hey, I have a life, and it’d take me most of the rest of it just to track down those of the 2500 contacts I had on Facebook that I really know, let alone slight acquaintances, former tennis club members, High School pals etc. I used to occasionally touch base with. Some of whom I’ll probably lose touch with forever. Ask Facebook if it cares.

LOL.

Anyway, those of you still using Meta – and I mean this super-seriously – PLEASE keep a record of your friends/posts/photos. I lost very few – just some that my friends shared – but that’s because my husband’s mega-organised, and does our photos.

Anyway, for any of you who used to follow me on F’book, you can follow me on one of these sites, in interested. No worries if not!!

XXAlice (aka The Bot)

(PS At least, you can at the mo 😊!!!!)

And so, I got lucky and was offered an interview in FOREWORD INDIES, which came out the same day as F'book banned me. (I said it was quite a week, right?)

This was fab, for the following reason: Vivian Turnbull interviewed me, and Vivian gave me my fav. review for Marianne. She's a mega-Austen fan, and when you consider that the questions she asked included:

1) "Don't you ever get nervy writing dialogue for iconic characters such as Jane Fairfax?" (Answer: "YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!")

2) "What about the ending of Austen's S&S made you feel that a sequel might work? Did I have any doubts that Marianne would be happy with Brandon?"

(Answer: "No. Austen assures us personally that 'Marianne could never love by halves' and that they were blissfully happy together. It was other considerations that drove me to write Marianne.)

Anyway, it was great chatting with her. You can check it out here.