My name is Steve Mohr. If I have forwarded you here it's because I knew you before and wanted to reconnect. I am trying to share with others the trauma that can occur with being booted from social media. Please be aware when you get booted from Facebook you lose everything out there on your Facebook page. I always had copies of my pictures so that wasn't a problem. What I dread most is the friendships that I lost. I had never imagined being booted from Facebook so I didn't plan accordingly. I had a lot of posts that I had archived. For most of the people I connected with for a 9 year period ending in July, 2019 I did not have name, phone number or email.

One of my concerns is that Facebook is now the public square and it can be shut down for those the system doesn't like. It didn't like me. So I have to hide my identity in order to participate. I always worry that by using this platform that I can be banned again and start from scratch or worse, never get back on. I am afraid to even have my picture on my profile page because of facial recognition software. I'm not always a paranoid conspiracy believing person. I am a software developer so I know that facial recognition software can be dangerous. I still trust technology but I am somewhat concerned that it could be used the wrong way.

If you feel that you could be booted there are some solutions I recommend. You can reconnect using another email. Create another Yahoo or Gmail and use that as log in information. You might want to use another computer at another location. Use a different birthdate. Obscure all information that you can. You can try working thru a VPN which you can select another location to log in from. UPDATE: Also you have to be careful on who you associate with. If you show your spouse or family as connected to you they can use that to identify you. It would all seem very paranoid to me if I wasn't a software developer with some understanding of how data systems can be used. Good luck and let me know if you have suggestions or stories mohrbike@yahoo.com End UPDATE

I want to share a little of my disappointment with Facebook. I had spent 9 years building up a friend base of 4000 people, a lot of whom are activists for racial equity. During a discussion with a bicycle group I found out someone had reported me to Facebook. The offense was not made clear but I think it was due to a post in the bicycle group. I ended up being permanently banned from Facebook. As a white straight male wealthy educated American I am not used to this treatment. My feelings were raw. Democracy hit me in the gut. Now that I am nominally on Facebook again it's a tenuous relationship. My weapon is dull. So I have spent time developing my website. This helps me enhance my front end coding skills, my writing and organizational skills.

The debate in the international bicycle Facebook group was about the groups leader who chose to insert an American flag into the banner of the landing page of the group. There were many people in the group who said that flag was divisive. There were many Americans who believed that it was not political, that it was just honoring who they are. They were suggesting that a flag is not a political tool. My simple response was to share the ISIS flag. If it's not political then...? The response gave me a win and a lose. Until then I believed Facebook made mistakes but overall made good decisions. I was given a brief opportunity to defend my actions, but it was to no avail. They didn't portray the consequences or tell me anything about the process ahead of time. I think I wrote about two sentences. Next time I logged in it said my account was closed. I couldn't access my friend list from around the world. I couldn't notify anyone of what happened.

Databases can be mined to find similar profiles to check to see if you're trying to bypass a ban. I know how database queries work from 17 years experience. Upon selecting how to re-enter the Facebook realm I started with another email, on another computer, with a different name, in a different location. I selected a lot of new friends to mask a pattern that might develop. I don't want them to be able to flag my account because it's similar to my previous profile. All the work I put into those previous relationships was lost.