Facebook follies: Juniors lose accounts after false accusations

Junior Karthik Ramachandran knew something was wrong. He’d tried logging in to his Facebook for the third time in a row, but the message was still there: "Your account has been disabled. If you have any questions or concerns, you can visit our FAQ page here."

Ramachandran was one of four juniors whose Facebook account was disabled in early July. He, along with his friends Ayush Aggarwal, Sathvik Koneru and Varun Meduri, were informed that their accounts had been disabled because someone had reported them for the “impersonation of a person or entity, or other misrepresentation of identity” as stated in the Facebook Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. The statement also gives Facebook the right to disable the accounts of users who violate the rules.

These Facebook impersonation problems are regulated by actual people. But according to Facebook’s 2014 annual report, up to 11.2 percent of its 1.23 billion monthly users could be fake accounts — a portion that makes any type of regulation, real or automated, highly error prone. Individuals looking to report an impersonator can fill out a form after logging in requesting Facebook staff to review the account.

"What probably happened is [somebody] who thought he was being funny reported us, and we got banned because of it,” Ramachandran said.

This is not the first time that Facebook’s fake account reporting policy has caused trouble for its users. In 2014, Facebook’s system flagged the accounts of many drag queens who had been using their unconventional but preferred names. These drag queens, along with many other members of the LGBT community, were forced to use their given names on Facebook.

While Facebook did eventually fix the problem, its systems are still highly error prone. For the most part, the company has only changed how it scrutinizes fake account reports meeting certain criteria, such as those based on unexpected or unconventional names.

Meduri remembers feeling “enraged” when he first received the message.

He, like the other juniors, was asked to submit some form of proper identification to Facebook indicating that he was in fact the student Varun Meduri who would be entering his junior year Saratoga High School in August.

Meduri and Koneru were among the lucky ones — they successfully sent photographs of their student IDs to Facebook via text in the few days they were given. Ramachandran, however, wasn’t as fortunate.

He remembers trying to send pictures of his student ID multiple times to Facebook; each time, he received a message saying he had used the “wrong channel of communication” to provide identification.

“It was frustrating because [Facebook] never told me what was the right channel,” Ramachandran said.

Eventually, Ramachandran relented and simply made a new account with his cellphone number, reasoning that reactivating his old account wasn’t worth the trouble.

“In the end, I’m pretty happy about it,” Ramachandran said, “because all the stupid photos of me on my old account are gone.”

Aggarwal faced a similar predicament when he tried to reactivate his account. He was “forced into an infinite loop” in which he tried and failed to submit his ID to the site administration. After doing his own research, he found out that these loops occur when Facebook plans to delete an account completely.

For the time being, he used a temporary account to communicate with the junior class officers and speech and debate team.

“I was quite enraged when I couldn’t get my account back,” Aggarwal said. “Long story short, my parents heard some choice words.”

In the end, only Koneru and Meduri were able to recover their original accounts, with Aggarwal and Ramachandran both creating new ones. However, the juniors still feel that Facebook should have acted differently.

“This [policy] allows for people’s accounts to be taken away for no reason,” Meduri said.

Koneru concurred, adding that in most cases these reports of fake accounts are made by internet “trolls,” or pranksters, looking to stir up trouble.

Considering that Ramachandran, Koneru, Aggarwal and Meduri are all close friends, Ramachandran remains open to the possibility that they were targeted. Nevertheless, he said he feels “no bitterness” over the incident — saying that in spite of all the trouble, making a new account gave him a clean slate.

Even though Ramachandran acknowledges Facebook’s veto power, he and Aggarwal believe that Facebook needs to examine all such reports more closely in the future.

“While this kind of security is beneficial for the community as a whole, Facebook should at least employ real people to analyze the situation so outcomes like this don’t happen again,” Aggarwal said.