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

Question

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 · Accepted Answer

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.

thatsamonad · Answer

I don&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;ve tried and tried to get in touch with someone at Instagram but it&rsquo;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 &ldquo;Report a Problem&rdquo; button and there was a property in the POST body labeled &ldquo;spam=true&rdquo; (the message on the screen was a generic &ldquo;sorry we couldn&rsquo;t do that please try again&rdquo; error). Eventually we gave up and changed the username to get around it, but all of her branding material has the old username.It&rsquo;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.

epetre · Answer

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

afavour · Answer

Not an expert here at all but are you sure they&rsquo;re not complaining because you haven&rsquo;t implemented FB login? I know you don&rsquo;t want to use it but given past experience here I imagine they very much want you to use it.&ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t integrate it at all&rdquo; does fall under &ldquo;failed to properly integrate&rdquo; after all.

vincentmarle · Answer

The reason why you need Facebook Login is because they don&rsquo;t allow you to use Instagram Auth to authenticate the user (I know very confusing) but only for linking purposes. So if you don&rsquo;t have any other authentication method than Instagram you&rsquo;ll need to add that before the user gets asked to connect with insta. Facebook login isn&rsquo;t your only auth option by the way (you can also just auth with username/password).

RobRivera · Answer

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

invalidusernam3 · Answer

Get to the front page of HN

Havoc · Answer

Same as always. Make noise on the twatter or here

redwood · Answer

Are they really "people" at all?

sys_64738 · Answer

Send an email and CC Zuck@FB.com?