Ask HN: How to get the attention of a human at Meta/FB?

[julianilson]

We're an indie app that's trying to make it easier to make genuine new friends as an adult.

One month ago, Meta/FB restricted our app from using their Instagram API.

Reason? We failed to properly integrate a feature that we do not use at all! (FB Login)

We have appealed 7 times now, but all that happens is the appeal button becomed re-enabled after a few days and there is no response. Nothing. Zilch.

Has anyone managed to get through to an actual human? We have tens of thousands of users who are affected.

(For those who are curious, the app is https://www.we3app.com/)

[KIFulgore]

All I can say is "welcome to hell". I had a job managing ~13 Facebook Apps and permissions, which I left in August for greener pastures. The opportunity not to work with Facebook (or WhatsApp or Instagram) was a huge reason.

[Abishek_Muthian]

Have you tried taking backup of those apps? If not then I'm sorry to tell you my friend that you're yet to witness the true Hell.

I want to delete my FB account, So I initiated backup(download of page) for my apps, One such app had large number of users and so I expected the download file to be ready in couple of days as informed by FB. It showed 'Pending' for a long time.

Several months have passed, My download didn't get generated and the 'Request a download' button is again active. That promised email from FB never arrived nor does it show that the download files were ever generated(Other pages with smaller users show that). FB for some reason has decided not to provide me with the download of my FB page.

Now I cannot delete my FB account until this gets sorted and I don't know how to sort this out.

[julianilson]

Wow...this might be standard protocol, then. It should be covered by a journalist.

[julianilson]

Please stop. You're just making me jealous now.

In all seriousness, what's driving me nuts is that they say they'll reply "by the end of the next business day", and there's NO response AT ALL.

What the hell are we supposed to do? We've been using the API for over 2 years. It's in the happy path UX. Removing it and creating a new UX for uploading individual photos feels insane just because nobody is there to flip the switch on our account.

[ffhhj]

Apply for a job at FB, contact engineers thru internal email. I actually did that at one large software company, and fixed their crappy docs in the process :)

[thatsamonad]

I don’t have any good advice for you but I do sympathize. My wife runs a small coffee shop and about a month ago Instagram flagged her business username as spam without any warning which prevents anyone from tagging and sharing her business. She’s had the username for over a year, and does NOT spam other pages with it. The closest she ever gets is people taking pictures of their drinks in their stories and posting with the business tagged in them.

We’ve tried and tried to get in touch with someone at Instagram but it’s impossible to do so. The only reason we could figure out it was a spam issue is because I opened the Chrome developer tools at one point to review the network request made by the “Report a Problem” button and there was a property in the POST body labeled “spam=true” (the message on the screen was a generic “sorry we couldn’t do that please try again” error). Eventually we gave up and changed the username to get around it, but all of her branding material has the old username.

It’s incredibly depressing and frustrating that there are no avenues to get these kinds of things resolved, especially for small businesses that depend on word of mouth and social media to grow and succeed.

[tmaly]

My sister use to run her own juice shop in Essex CT. She could never tag the location in IG because it contains a banned word.

[epetre]

Holding a startup and it's users hostage is standard Web3 practice, right? So excited for the Metaverse yayy!!

[afavour]

Not an expert here at all but are you sure they’re not complaining because you haven’t implemented FB login? I know you don’t want to use it but given past experience here I imagine they very much want you to use it.

“Didn’t integrate it at all” does fall under “failed to properly integrate” after all.

[julianilson]

It's possible! Hadn't thought of that. What's most frustrating is that they don't even tell us that. If they did, maybe I would integrate it. But without being sure, it could be a massive waste of time.

[vincentmarle]

The reason why you need Facebook Login is because they don’t allow you to use Instagram Auth to authenticate the user (I know very confusing) but only for linking purposes. So if you don’t have any other authentication method than Instagram you’ll need to add that before the user gets asked to connect with insta. Facebook login isn’t your only auth option by the way (you can also just auth with username/password).

[vincentmarle]

Relevant info here:

> Authentication — Instagram Basic Display is not an authentication solution. Data returned by the API cannot be used to authenticate your app users or log them into your app. If you need an authentication solution we recommend using Facebook Login instead.

https://developers.facebook.com/docs/instagram-basic-display...

[RobRivera]

if you are going to use their apis and presumably data/social graphs, expect it to come with strings attached- in this case fb login.

else, organically grow

[mellosouls]

I agree with this, but

a) such a requirement should be clearly documented - is it? A reference would be useful.

b) there is still the issue (raised repeatedly on here) of the lack of ability to contact human beings when things go wrong.

[julianilson]

Exactly! Especially when they explicitly tell you that they'll get back to you by the end of the next business day, and then NEVER do.

[RobRivera]

re: b) - I think thats a feature not a bug

[invalidusernam3]

Get to the front page of HN

[AndyJames]

Correct answer right here. It's also beneficial do be at least 100 million dollar company

[Havoc]

Same as always. Make noise on the twatter or here

[julianilson]

lol the twatter. I wish we had more of a following there... This is when you regret not having invested in the socials.

[Havoc]

>This is when you regret not having invested in the socials.

Same - zero posts. I definitely couldn't create enough noise on twitter to move the needle on anything. Don't think my mom has any sway over google & friends...

[redwood]

Are they really "people" at all?

[julianilson]

Zombies are people too, my friend.

[sys_64738]

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