It’s a strange feeling waking up to find you no longer exist—at least, not according to Meta.
No warning, no reason, no “we’re terribly sorry, old chap.” Just poof. One moment you’re posting reflections on leadership and cross-cultural life in Vietnam, the next, you’re locked out of Facebook and Messenger entirely. Not suspended. Disabled. Which, in Meta-speak, means “you no longer exist, and also, you can’t ask why.”
Their help page, with a sense of irony worthy of Kafka, says you can appeal your disablement by logging into your account. But of course, you can’t log into your account because… it’s disabled. So the “appeal” is a bit like being told you can only challenge your eviction by getting back into the house you’ve been locked out of.
The whole thing would be darkly funny if it weren’t so absurd. For years, I’ve built communities, shared posts, stayed in touch with colleagues and friends—and then one day, an algorithm hiccups, or a human in a distant cubicle misclicks, and suddenly I’m persona non grata. No recourse, no explanation, just silence from the great Meta machine.
Now, before I tighten my tinfoil hat too snugly, I’ll admit it’s probably a coincidence that this happened just as I was having a rather robust disagreement with Amazon. It’s not that Jeff and Mark are plotting against me in some Bond-villain boardroom. But it does make you wonder what happens when two of the world’s largest gatekeepers to modern life can flick you off the map without explanation.
They own the roads we all drive on—digital roads, yes, but no less real in their impact. When they close the gates, we don’t just lose access to our accounts; we lose access to our networks, our messages, our history, and, for many, our livelihoods.
So maybe this is the universe’s unsubtle way of reinforcing what I’ve said for years: never build your house on rented land.
Meta can delete your account. Amazon can lock your dashboard. Google can change its algorithm. But your own website, your own mailing list, your own voice—those can’t be silently switched off at 2 a.m.
If you’d like a deeper dive into Meta’s history of questionable behaviour with user data and unilateral control, I wrote about that here:
If Meta ever decides to acknowledge my existence again, perhaps I’ll post this there, too. Until then, I’ll keep writing here—where no algorithm can decide I’m a non-person.
Because if leadership in the modern age means anything, it’s this: we keep showing up, even when the platforms don’t.
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