Ask HN: Hacker claimed ownership and then deleted my Facebook Page of 50k users

[metalised]

As an update to [0] and [1], the scammers have now completely deleted my page of 50k subscribers.

I am devastated. 10+ years of building a heavy metal community, gone like a puff of smoke, just like that. And Facebook still hasn't replied to a single message. I hate to imagine what would have happened if I was an actual business...

I am reaching out to the HN community one last time. If anyone has any advice or can help me talk to an actual human being at Facebook and restore my page and ownership, please get in touch!

(or if not, at least vote / comment your own frustrations or horror stories below, to help get my story be seen by such a person, if you think this post deserves it...)

  [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29706571
  [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29876423

[vertis]

Sometimes company legal teams can be the most accessible way to draw attention to something like this, and I don't mean in a combative way. They're very risk conscious, they see a '10+ years of building a heavy metal community, gone like a puff of smoke' in terms of risks, both of bad publicity but also if you were to somehow litigate because of the damage to your business or project. Often they have an email address that is manned because they have to respond to legal requests of various types.

You can potentially request all your data (and data about the hack) and let them know why, maybe reach out asking how you can get law enforcement involved and who you should contact after you've made a police report. It's not a threat, but it get it on somebodies radar. If you express how devastated you are there is potential for them to help. They also have a lot more latitude than any kind of helpdesk (especially at the scale of Facebook, and the users/customers facebook has).

They're also well connected with-in an organization because they have to sign-off on all kinds of projects and risks.

I think `patio11` has amazing advice is a similar vein[1].

[1]: https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1162561822248992768?lang=... (I think he has a longer version/reference, but I can't find it)

[KerrickStaley]

The patio11 blog post you're looking for is https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-r...

[Abishek_Muthian]

> You can potentially request all your data (and data about the hack)

It is impossible to backup the existing page using Facebook Download Page tool for a page with large number of users, I've been trying that for months[1] to delete my Facebook account. Perhaps if initiated by their end it might be possible but then again does requesting user data using personal account include page data as well?

There's now a 'How can I reach a human at Facebook' post making to the top of HN every month in vain. I think that Facebook employees in HN don't want to reveal themselves for obvious reasons, But what I would really like to understand is what reasoning a company has to remove all support systems?

Closest I can come up with is "We can control all user actions on our platform to X% accuracy that we don't need any support system for the eyes and just maintain it for the wallets".

[1] https://abishekmuthian.com/meta-is-holding-my-facebook-page-...

[tacostakohashi]

I can't see the legal teem being too concerned about litigation:

https://www.facebook.com/terms.php

Accordingly, our liability shall be limited to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, and under no circumstances will we be liable to you for any lost profits, revenues, information or data, or consequential, special, indirect, exemplary, punitive or incidental damages arising out of or related to these Terms or the Facebook Products, even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damages. Our aggregate liability arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Facebook Products will not exceed the greater of USD 100 or the amount you have paid us in the past twelve months.

[jsmith99]

Surely involving the legal team would mean the regular support team could no longer be involved?

[yumraj]

Probably not the advice you're looking for, but looks like you have a blog also and am assuming that some/many of your subscribers also look at your blog. So, you may want to use your blog to spread the word about losing your page so that your subscribers know what's happening and you don't lose many of them.

In addition, while you should keep looking at ways to recover your FB page, but you may want to take this opportunity to create a more traditional forum of your own.

You may want to look at AVSForum.com, Home-Barista.com and others for ideas on how to structure very successful traditional review/forum sites and while it may be more effort initially as you'll have to build it yourself, in the long run it may be more fruitful for you.

Either ways, Good Luck!!

[metalised]

Thank you for the advice!

The problem with this is that, even though the Facebook Page was simply mirroring the content on the blog, most of the interactions with actual bands and fans was via the Facebook page, not the blog. I don't really know if the blogpage itself has the same readership; if anything it's the other way round: I'm worried that with the Facebook page gone, people won't know to find the blog. And with the page deleted, I have no visible way of informing my subscribers either.

I did create a 'backup' page on Facebook (here: https://www.facebook.com/Metalised-Life-112985154608128) and announced the hack to people on the 'main' page, but the main page was taken down before people subscribed to the backup. Annoyingly, this announcement was part of the same post announcing the 'best of 2021 metal albums', which got many upvotes and replies from the bands and fans involved, but it's almost as if nobody noticed the part about the hack and the 'backup' page in the post...

[prawn]

What ideas would you take from something like home-barista? From a quick browse, it looked like a typical forum, plus sponsors and a donation option (which I can't imagine would be lucrative?).

[metalised]

Update: I updated my blog to reflect the discussion taking place here: https://metalised.wordpress.com/2022/01/27/metalised-faceboo...

Thank you everyone for your support and vivid discussion. I hope this manages to reach the right eyeballs eventually!

----

Further update: I can't edit the post itself anymore, but someone from Meta reached out! Thank you so much, kind stranger, and thank you HN! You rock!

[sedatk]

> but someone from Meta reached out

I hate that justice is a PR battle.

[karlzt]

Consider putting it on Telegram, as you may know Telegram is growing faster than ever before.

[weedfroglozenge]

And does it look like they'll be able to restore it? :)

[nopenopenopeno]

Universally necessary services like communication, healthcare, and social media (the digital plaza) can never be justly managed by private companies. It is an inherent structural contradiction that has failed and will continue to fail our society until we are willing to organize resistance beyond the realm of consumer choice.

[maxbond]

I'd like to point out something my sibling commenters seem to be missing; nopenopenopeno never suggested that the _government_ run these services instead. They said that private companies were incapable of doing this, and that competition was not a suitable mechanism for achieving the necessary outcomes.

It is quite possible that neither the state nor private industry can do this, and that we need _something else_. I don't know what this is, it seems apparent to me that Mastodon-style, self hosted solutions are not tenable either, or perhaps their time has simply not come yet. But let us not limit our imagination to two broken options.

[cousin_it]

It's not about private companies. I have an account at a private bank and am not afraid of something like this happening at all. Because to the bank I'm not just an abstract "username and password": the account is tied to my real world identity, so in the last resort I'll prove to the bank that I'm me using state provided means. I'm getting more and more convinced that online accounts important to people's livelihood (like gmail where you have tons of important stuff) should work the same way, as a contract tied to your real world identity, and in doubt resolve things by webcam call or personal appointment.

[bko]

You're assuming that public organizations would run a more secure responsive network. My interactions with public institutions makes me doubt this assumption, especially for something as vast and complicated as facebook's network.

[NaturalPhallacy]

I would say it's another one of those things like private health insurance and no public option. It's not failing, it's working exactly as intended for our domestic oligarchy.

Much like having two parties that are mostly the same on major foreign and economic policy, having the digital plaza be managed by mostly a few big companies that are all politically aligned, and cozy with the government is a great way to pretend to have free and open discourse when the reality is we have no idea what's happening behind the scenes and it's all a-okay according to some because they're "private businesses".

While it's true that the first amendment only applies to the US government, the concept of free speech predates the US constitution by about 2200 years and is still important.

[quickthrower2]

The problem is the expectation that these services are gratis to users. If users are prepared to pay, this metal community for example would be on its own domain with a PHPBB or similar. Many people do this by the way. Even for non technical topics.

People pay a lot for internet access both through mobile and land connections but are less willing to pay for things on the internet or maybe its the hassle of setting up a site (comparable to the hassle of say buying a car: a hassle but not insurmountable for anyone).

[tomcooks]

The "digital plaza" ownership and total control on one's own community is a literal 2.99 euro/month VPS running mastodon away.

Shitposting one's thoughts by arranging pixels on a public forum is NOT a necessity, it's a luxury. If you value it as a necessity consider funding your own for yourself and others you care about, it would end up costing about 7 euro/year if you find even just 4 other like-minded persons.

[TameAntelope]

Social media is in no way on the same level as healthcare, are you kidding me?

You do not need Facebook to survive, nor do you need Facebook to participate in your community.

Unreal. Just… unreal.

[adventured]

Facebook pages are no more important today than the yellow pages were yesterday, or classified ads, or newspapers. Very little of which was publicly operated.

If your local newspaper blockaded you out of their advertising section 50 years ago (eg they dislike you), it could have been devastating too. There are a lot of scenarios like that. You can't get around those potential problems by saying everything should be run under National Socialism; instead of dealing with Verizon you'll be dealing with a board of vicious bureaucrats with direct political power - they can have you shot or imprisoned at will in a more developed Socialist system - that will eventually want bribed to let you continue to exist.

[dokem]

Construction is private and buildings don't fall down and are incredibly safe. Food production is private and people don't get spoiled or poisonous products. I think this is reductive.

[scarface74]

Social media is not a “necessity”. He could have used his Facebook page to steer his community to his own hosted site and forum.

Do you really trust giving more power to the government?

[ed25519FUUU]

Plenty of absolutely horrible kafkaesque experiences with the state. This is definitely not exclusively a “private company” problem.

[emteycz]

Facebook page is not necessary communication. That's telephone and mobile networks. Healthcare is successfully managed by private companies all around the world - even in Europe (the funding is organized by law but still the hospitals are private companies and half of EU countries have private health insurance companies). The horrors of publicly managed social media were already tested here in Europe too and we never want to go back.

[hombre_fatal]

You can do this on Reddit. No matter how successful and busy a subreddit may be without the presence of moderators, you can request ownership of a subreddit if the moderators have not been active in some time.

I found this out when someone did it to me. I had an account that I only used for moderation duties. I didn’t need to post on it. My community was doing just fine.

Well, Reddit transferred it to someone else and they turned it into an SEO spam generator.

[Laforet]

The reverse can also happen with people hoarding subreddits and refuse to hand them over to more eager people. Even when it is clear their interest have moved on, reddit admins will refuse usurpation requests because "the moderator is active".

[ComradePhil]

The downside to that is that you have to be on reddit.

[Datenstrom]

Not at all the same, and only a minor annoyance but a new twitter account i made a few days ago just disappeared completely with no notice or reason. I think it maybe got flagged as a bot not sure. I made it, added my real name, a picture, and followed a bunch of people I knew. Then "account not found" like two days latter but I was able to remake the same exact account. Feel a bit gaslighted. did I just imagine making it lol?

[pjc50]

They're very insistent on you adding a phone number.

[jzawodn]

Ask for your money back?

[beeskneecaps]

I've heard that Facebook doesn't actually hard-delete any information, so odds are that when support gets back to you sometime this year, they'll have admin tools that will allow them to reactivate the group.

[metalised]

I hope so!

(both what you say, and that Facebook support actually gets back to me sometime this year!)

[londons_explore]

I don't think this is an ability Facebook support has. Engineering could probably do it, but I doubt you're going to be able to get this issue on their radar.

[aliher1911]

Keeping the data for European users after deletion would be in breach of GDPR, so Facebook does delete data after some grace period. It doesn't necessarily mean physically removing files, but you can do other things like storing data at rest encrypted with with an account unique key and then removing the key when account is deleted.

[rmason]

I went through something similar and this brings up some very bad memories. Facebook is way too lenient about taking away control of pages. Saddens me to know years later that things still have not changed.

You're going to have to reach someone who works at Facebook. Going through official channels can be an exercise in extreme frustration. It shouldn't be that way at all but it hasn't been a priority for them to do better.

[echelon]

Your best bet is to get ahold of actual Facebook engineers, and this is a good place to do it. Take this issue to Twitter as well. It looks like your previous posts didn't make it to the front page, but with any luck this time you'll get some real traction.

The suggestion in a previous thread about buying an Oculus to get priority customer support is also not a bad one.

Do you have any snapshots of your membership base? Maybe you can reach out and start anew. Check your email, as it'll typically have a lot of names and accounts. Also see if archive.org and archive.is have snapshots.

If and when you do get your community back, I'd highly suggest starting an internet forum and directing some or all of your community there.

[nsenifty]

Facebook engineers wouldn't be able to help unless they can personally vouch for the person affected for privacy and security reasons.

[kingcharles]

I had an issue with Cash App recently and support just put me in a death-spiral so I looked up the phone numbers of some execs and texted them. At first they were helpful in escalating the issue, but then they terminated my account for contacting their employees outside the online support channel lol.

[dylan604]

>Your best bet is to get ahold of actual Facebook engineers,

Isn't this exactly what the OP is asking HN to help them do? It's not like they asked "what do I do?", they specifically asked for help doing what you've not helfpully posted they do.

[vorpalhex]

I'm sorry this happened to you. I can't imagine what you are going through.

Obviously keep trying to reach Facebook. Whether you are successful or not, you need to get your community off of Facebook and onto something you can control, whether that is a forum or chat community.

Start trying to get in contact with other major members. Start giving out a URL to track community updates. Setup Discord[1] or Matrix or something for two way communication.

If you need some hosting or a domain, drop me a line and I'll see if I can help get you sorted.

[1] - Discord is only marginally better than Facebook and you risk the same problem here. Treat it like a temporary fix, not a solution.

[jbkiv]

So sorry metalised, not much you can do and no legal recourse/appeal as you have agreed to the TOS. FB will not help much either.

The a lesson to be learned here. Zinga learned that with Farmville in other circumstances. If you can, don't build on the top of some other companies, a FB, an Instagram, Pinterest, or a Gmail/Maps. Rug pulls do not happen solely in crypto.

There are exceptions of course: build something good on the top of salesforce and if you get traction (=paying customers) they will buy you.

More and more posts on HN are written to show how evil those companies are (Amazon to their third party merchants, Google or Facebook to their users), but you have choices in life, simply build a different model. The lesson is: don't build your whole business with faceless companies, even worse if you don't pay for the services. What do you expect in return?

[ttty]

Actually pretty much everywhere you place it can have issues.

Even with a domain, you can lose discoverability from search engines. Nobody will find you except exact domain in url bar.

So basically you still depend on one of the big companies. If it's not Facebook, is Google. Still bad.

[8bitsrule]

These big companies don't much care about people who don't fit into their plans.

At one point I was 4 years into a Blogger blog when someone decided to create Google+, insisting that everyone needed to supply their real name. When I signed up for G+ with my blogger alias, they shut down access to the blog until I complied. Since I was (miracle!) 'free to export' 4 years of blogposts, I did ... and each and every one of the exported posts had a Google link embedded in it.

In short: to 'free' automated services - despite any cozy feelings of 'belonging' we feel - we are insects. 'Community' isn't in their vocabulary.

[dn3500]

Too late now, but it's a good idea to keep your own backups of all your FB data. There is a well-hidden option under the settings to make and download a zip file with all your posts, comments, photos, everything. Worst case this can be used to rebuild your community elsewhere.

[kristiandupont]

I am sure it would be nice to have but a backup of a community isn't worth much if you can't re-establish it with a "restore" function.

[Jolter]

How would you rebuild a community - start a new Page on Facebook and re-invite all you previous followers?

[herbst]

This won't help you but Facebook seems to have zero interest in such things. After spending thousands in ads my account got finally blocked early 2021 appearantly for advertising the masks my grandmum was selling on Etsy. Appeals were commentless ignored. I lost access to several big groups and pages.

The same happened a few years before with my last real name account, first they asked for my passport, pictures, identifying friends and then still commentless blocked me, removed my pages and groups as well as my semi popular apps.

The reality is Facebook doesn't care.

And if you build any kind of dependency or business around it you are playing with fire.

[dmortin]

How did they hack you? Did you click on a link in a message which installed some keylogger on your computer? Or did you have an easy to guess password? Did you have two factor authentication?

[metalised]

Hi dmortin, I have no way of knowing for sure, but I think it was none of that.

I think they simply 'claimed' the page, and because it's was a community page with no 'business' associated with it in the account, they managed to use Facebook's automated 'claim this page for your business' processes to their advantage. Which obviously is a scam, but a hard one to contest when there's no human you can get hold of at Facebook to point it out.

My previous posts (see the older HN links on my post above) have some more details about the chronology of the "hack" (if that's even the right word for it) and how the scammers tried to capitalise on it.

Obviously I've changed all my passwords just in case though...

[Jolter]

While interesting to know, for a curious observer, it’s not exactly relevant to solving the OP’s problem.

[ViViDboarder]

Yikes! Clearly this is post of a bigger scam with that “Verification“ message. Wild that they do nothing about it.

There must be some Facebook engineers on here, so hopefully this gets some visibility.

[metalised]

I'm fairly sure the way they managed to claim ownership in the first place was by 'claiming the page for their business', because no business account was associated with the page.

In my case there was no 'business manager' associated with the page because it was a community page. But it's not a stretch of the imagination to imagine there are many 'business' pages out there, which are still managed via a personal account only, and can be 'plucked away' from their owners by a scammer the same way!

I would have thought Facebook would at least have some sort of semi-automated "dispute" process for when someone claims your page at the very least!

[LambdaTrain]

Not a response as a solution to Op: is there any recommended open-source project that can be used to self-host a comminity server?

I would expect that as a host I just need to focus on configuring and maintaining instead of learning to build a website, for example, it sounds like hosting vpn using Wireguard.

On the other hand, I wonder if that really makes it better off than to use fb/discord, since if fb/discord is vulnerable to hack, so is my own hosted one.

[schleck8]

Yeah, a bunch of options.

Mastodon is a safe bet

There is also Pleroma, GNU social and Diaspora

https://alternativeto.net/category/social/social-network/?pl...

[mdrzn]

Someone once took control of a personal Facebook account for a friend of mine, which was connected to his Business Manager and all the campaigns he was running.

We still have no idea how that guy took control since the account had the 2FA setup, but still. No way to contact FB, no help at all, we ended up nuking the cards connected to the BM and restart his profile from scratch.

Facebook won't help you in any way.

[herbst]

That's a smart security model. No idea how they got in (maybe session stealing in a public WiFi?) But just doing the same problematic thing again.

[throwway1922]

Did you have 2FA? If yes, contact https://krebsonsecurity.com/

[teleforce]

This is yet another many postings on HN recently that used term hacker as the culprit for what essentially a potential crime committed by cracker or intruder. You won't call a robber, an entrepreneur would you?

Using the word hacker for those doing illegal activities just undermine the hackers community. Please use the correct terminology for the benefit of the relevant societies and communities.

[sakopov]

If we want to talk about proper use of terminology, the word "hacker" was adopted by web 2.0 startup scene and became a bullshit buzzword. The original definition has nothing to do with entrepreneurship or malicious intent (as advertised by media and pop culture).

[stjohnswarts]

Do you know how you got hacked? I mean did you have 2FA? phone number? Did they manage to get around a plain old password that was weak enough to brute force? I'm surprised that facebook wouldn't be like "you tried 10 times, go away and try again in 24 hours".

[getup8]

I’ve forwarded to a friend at FB. Will let you know if he’s able (or willing) to do anything :)

[karlzt]

Consider putting it on Telegram, as you may know Telegram is growing faster than ever before.

[dec0dedab0de]

Same thing happened to a friend of mine with an anime page. She never got it back.

[tonypags]

Any chance you can share the topic of the FB group? I'm curious to know if it was politically motivated (even non-political topics can have their own, internal politics, too). Maybe someone is trying to silence you?

[metalised]

It is the facebook page for my blog, https://metalised.wordpress.com which largely exists for the end-of-year best metal album reviews these days.

These reviews get cross-posted on the facebook page, and tend to be very popular, both by fans and featured bands alike.

[philk10]

it was about Heavy Metal

[grammarnazzzi]

Is it possible that, after you finish grieving for this loss, you'll come to see deleting your facebook as the best thing that has ever happened to you?

You just got your life back. Congratulations!

[Giorgi]

sorry dude, its gone. It is not deleted though, it is merged with larger page they are building. I know because something similar happened to me ( I allowed it to happen out of curiosity. )

[metalised]

what exactly happened to yours then, if I may ask?

[makeavish]

I had similar experience with my facebook page of 200k+ likes but facebook didn't even care to reply

[TsukiZombina]

Just a few likes, but it happened the same to me, It was important for me, though.

[beeboop]

Plot twist: OP is the hacker trying to get control over a recently deleted community :)

Just kidding

[metalised]

You joke, but this is a real concern for me ... even if I do get a person replying here, presumably the hacker used dodgy means of getting access in the first place! how can I definitively prove what I'm saying is true?

My main hope is that it will be clear from the page's history that I've been involved from the very start, and the new "owner's" actions will look as suspicious to a real human as they do to me!

In the meantime, I've updated my blog to mention this discussion, proving at least the blog part of my ownership :)

https://metalised.wordpress.com/2022/01/27/metalised-faceboo...

(hopefully, this, and the fact that the now deleted page used to point to this page for the last 10 years should be enough!)

[xtracto]

I thought something among the lines. This would be a very good publicity stunt. I did not know about that metalised.wordpress.com wordpress page and I am an avid Heavy Metal listener. My first thought is, shit, I'm going to help this guy buy re-promoting his page. But then it landed on me... how good of a PR tactic this would be.

[fake-name]

Someone usurped your voluntary serfdom of facebooks property by displacing you in favor of them.

Facebook may say you "own" your page on their service. They are lying.

[mxuribe]

I'm sorry that this happened to you. What i am about to propose is not a solution for you for now unfortunately. But maybe something to help for the future...Have you considered starting a new presence for yourself and your community on the fediverse (e.g. mastodon, pleroma, diaspora, friendica, etc.)?? This will take work and time of course and maybe not all members will follow you over, but if you start a new community on one of the existing fediverse instances - or even better and more resilient, start your own instance - then facebook or other entities will not be able to let this happen to you/your community again. (Granted you can of course get hacked in your new world, encounter negativity, etc...But you will likely be in better position to do something more for yourself than what FB is/isn't doing.)

Step 1: Research the topic of the fediverse, and specifically find options for you to sign up for accounts...Yes, plural acounts...so you can get a flavor for the differnce in apps, instances, existing communities and so on. "Try" before you "buy". See also site like: https://fediverse.party/en/fediverse

During this step, if you can still access the legacy FB community/page as a participant, inform your peers that you're trying this fediverse thing out, and if they're interested in experimenting with you. The more that can go along for the ride, the merrier!

Step 2: Sign up for a couple of different accounts, join some existing communities. No need to be shady nor too secretive, be honest with folks that you're testing the waters...and of course be respectful; that helps new members. Get familiar with using the tech (since there are nuances and differences to how conventional social media typically operates, new vocabularies, etiquette)... Do not research about setting up your own instance...just get comfy being a regular user, and understanding the rhythms of the fediverse. And, if some members from the legacy FB page did in fact join you in this experiment, ask them what they think so far.

Step 3: Decide which community to stay with in the fediverse (maybe re-create your "true"/"final" account), and then start inviting community members from legacy FB page. I should clarify that like FB, you are not restricted to only 1 community...you can join as many places as you wish.

Optional Step 4: After some time, if you're really into the fediverse, want more freedom, etc...Research setting up your instance/community...or look for providers that you pay for managing the infrastructure for you. Nothing is free - you either invest time/money managing system yourself or pay someone else to do it for you.

Good luck, and again, sorry that this happened to you in the first place!

[Jolter]

I think you have too high hopes for the possibility to get non tech-geek users to try the Fediverse. If Heavy Metal Community A on Facebook disappears overnight, I think the users will simply join Heavy Metal Community B (on Facebook).

[metalised]

There is no "legacy FB page" to join as a participant. That's the problem. The hackers deleted the page.

I mentioned it to another poster here, but essentially I tried to inform my subscribers about the hack before the page was deleted, as part of a high-profile post (the end of year best metal albums post, which is the yearly highlight of the page, and always gets a lot of visibility).

Unfortunately, not many people seemed to notice or act on the 'hack' stuff in the post, even though the post itself did actually get a lot of votes and 'thank you' replies from bands. But only a handful of people subscribed to the 'backup' page that I mentioned in that post.

Unless I manage to get the page restored somehow, the best I can hope for is that next year, anyone who "actively" looks for the end of year list and notices the page is gone, might decide to google 'metalised', end up on my blog, see what happened, and subscribe to the backup page ... but that already feels like it would be too much effort for the average facebook user, even if they did get value from that community. To be honest, it's more like the commenter below says. If my Heavy Metal community A disappears overnight, chances are people will simply jump over to Heavy Metal community B rather than start looking for 'fediverse' stuff (I don't even know what that is, to be honest, and I doubt many of my subscribers would either).

[tqi]

How would a distributed system help? Being on a distributed system wouldn't keep hackers from taking control of your self hosted page and hosing it.

[new_guy]

Facebook is a cancer, take this as a sign to start your own social network. There's lots of 'off-the-shelf' scripts you can use (see codecanyon.net)

You can rebuild your community in no time and make it better than it was.

[AlwaysRock]

Very HN response. "My FB community got destroyed. Can anyone else?" "FB bad. Build your own."

Sorry OP. I don't know anyone who can help. It seems to me like FB would be able to reactivate the group if you can get a hold of someone. I don't think they purged their DB of your group.

[basscomm]

This is good advice if you're technically savvy enough to be able to set up and maintain a website. If you're in the tech bubble long enough, though, it's easy to forget that most people aren't and don't want to be. You send them to a link to a bunch of scripts they can use to build a website and either their eyes will glaze over or they'll ask you to do it for them (or both).

I'm no fan of Facebook, and I absolutely believe that more people should make their own websites and communities on the Internet, but I'm realistic enough to know that most people just won't bother.

[WillPostForFood]

Best communities right now are old fashion, self-hosted forums.

[leke]

Do you think there could be a universal social database that companies could build their platforms on?

People could control what they share based on a parent dashboard and changes would automatically cascade to platforms you added.

[kordlessagain]

Thousands of years later, we’re still realizing impermanence is a thing, yet keep on keeping on trying to ignore that fact.

[marcosdumay]

The OP's community didn't die by itself, it was killed. Impermanence is a very real thing, but when somebody goes and explicitly terminates something, focusing on the impermanence is wrong on all accounts.

[beeboop]

This isn't a very kind response