Last week I pulled up in the beach carpark next to this guy driving a Stage One Land Rover (for all intents and purposes a Series 3 - if you know Land Rovers and want to ask, do so in the comments) who was driving this across the Nullabor. We exchanged Instagram connects as he plans to come back past our place to see our Defender. Social media is awesome for this - we've met lots of great people this way. Our account is thus valuable to us - a shame Meta doesn't get that, unless, of course, you pay a sub for them to do so.
There’s this old adage that the customer should always be right. And of course, the customer is sometimes an asshole, and sometimes lies. However, most dissatisfaction with Facebook seems to be real, genuine, lived experience. People whose accounts suddenly disappear. Years and years of photos just poof. Being locked out, shadowbanned, flagged by automation, or trapped in support loops where no human ever appears.
The other thing is, so what happened to me is that we run this account that’s got something like 18,000 to 20,000 followers on Instagram, and we used to pay a small amount for Meta Verified because we knew this stuff was going to happen. It was a kind of insurance for us while we were travelling, getting brand deals, making connections with people. We had years of content there, and I didn’t really want to lose any of it. It genuinely worried me because I’d spoken to more than a handful of people who had had this happen to them.
However, since we weren’t really using it that much, I thought maybe we could forego the expense. Would you believe — or maybe you would — two weeks later we see this account on my Facebook and on Jamie’s Facebook using our old reels, our old content of England, of Morocco, of travelling through landscapes with our Land Rover, all our personal details, all our content, just duplicated under another account. And every few days they’d rip something else and put it on their Facebook page, and it was one letter off. No, scratch that. It wasn’t even one letter off. The second word was decapitalised. So anyone who saw this content would be forgiven for thinking that was us. Maybe they hadn’t followed us after all and should follow this account.
But why? I asked Chatty:
What these people are usually doing is exploiting the trust and legitimacy that an established account has already built, because it is far easier to impersonate authenticity than to create it from scratch. By cloning your reels, your travel footage, your captions, your aesthetic, and even your names almost exactly, they inherit the appearance of a real human life with history, relationships, and social proof, which can then be leveraged for scams, fake giveaways, crypto schemes, phishing links, romance fraud, follower farming, engagement bait, reselling the account later, or simply gaming the algorithm with content they know already performed well. The reason they copy accounts like yours specifically is because travel and lifestyle pages project aspiration, mobility, trustworthiness, and emotional warmth, which makes followers less suspicious and more likely to engage, donate, click, or respond. The truly maddening part is not just that the impersonation exists, because impersonation has always existed online, but that the platforms often leave the burden of enforcement almost entirely on the victim, so you are effectively forced to monitor, report, document, and defend your own identity inside a system whose scale and automation make you feel invisible unless you are either extremely large, extremely profitable, or paying for access to support that used to be considered a basic responsibility of the platform itself.
OK, yep, so basic responsibility be damned, because they just have too many fraudsters to deal with. So how could they possibly be expected to deal with this? And you go, well, fuck it then, I’m gonna leave Facebook if that’s their attitude. But then if you do that, you lose access to communities, to business opportunities, to friends and connections you’ve made over the years, to years and years of content that you have created.
And so when you try to report this stuff, they go, “No, don’t see anything wrong with it.” And you’re like, for fuck’s sake, this is not us. It’s clear to see that it’s not us. What the hell is going on?
So we’ve told everybody we know to report it, because maybe that will help. I honestly don’t understand why this isn’t more regulated. No one actually seems to care. I've also signed back up to Meta so I can speak to someone about it and get it resolved. What happened to businesses serving the customer? Why are we in this situation where we pay for things that should be free?
Has this happened to you? What would you do?
With Love,
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Shit, I'm sorry this is happening to you guys! I loved your account on IG. What should be reported? I'd love to. Not that it seems to do much - I've seen a bunch of impersonators of people I knew irl and the platform just went 'whatever, bro'
Exactly they don't care, I have tons of people report it. Do it though. My account on FB is Roving Tracks, theirs is Roving tracks. The little letter is the give away. You'd have to follow our page I think so you can report them.
Meta is such a turd. Lots of horror stories like yours and the others you spoke of. They don't give two shits. Not even one. I hate using FB. Do it to stay in touch with several peeps from my extended family and friend circle. Quit it before, but lost contact with lots of folks. May call it quits there again. Getting tired of the never ending ads in my feed.
I hate it too.
Wtf!! Don't they have an impersonation option when you report it? I've seen it before.
It sucks but it's as also a nice testimony of how good your account is 😉
Ha yes sorta... But I think they just farm anyone over a certain amount. They'll probably give up when they realise it's an unpopular niche. They do have that option but Facebook never do anything about it. Ever. It's insane..
I don't know if it happened to me, because I left FB 8 years ago for Steemit because they would not allow people to see my posts. Because I had signed on as Golden Oak Farm they thought I was a business and should pay. I had an Instagram account but because I didn't have a cell phone it was too onerous to upload stuff. And I've not been on either since.
I am sorry you are having to deal with this. It really stinks!
Yeah it's a real wind up. I wouldn't bother but I worked hard to build connections there. Still I haven't used it in ages. I can definitely see why you gave it up for sure.
At least when it is cryptographically signed on a chain you can say "this content of me was not posted by my key".
Yeah and everyone will dv them out of existence.
error
LOL.
Humans are remarkable storytellers.
Sometimes the real story is:
"I met someone interesting."
But the conscious mind quickly goes:
"Quick. Wrap this in sociology before anyone notices." 🫣
That they do. But so do store owners. Well, even babies lie and so do animals I have found. Remarkable and strange lying is. It's a survival mechanism me thinks, that sometimes ends up with shooting your own leg.
But maybe, that's why the next line to the customers is always right is, "in matters of taste"?
It's like a clever way of stating "never argue with an idiot". Maybe, the famous phrase, "The customer is always right, in matters of taste", was actually a reminder and a warning to the marketeer/business owner. Or to all of us who has more than 3 brain cells. Which if anyone is missing a few I really recommend micro dosing some special muhshrooms.