When Facebook decides you are not a real person

Robert Feder is a real person.

I know this from our countless interactions over the years, starting when he was the media critic at the Sun-Times. I would wander back to his tidy office on the fourth floor of 401 N. Wabash to pick his brain, schmooze, brag, complain, enjoy the pleasure of his company.

I especially liked to run thorny journalistic dilemmas past him because, as anyone who knows Feder is aware, he has an oak-ribbed ethical framework. Not just real a real person, but a good one.

In the years since, I have confirmed his existence time and again, on the phone, over lunch. At his daughter's wedding and both my sons' weddings, even though attending the first involved a six-hour drive up to Northern Michigan. Who does that? A friend, I suppose.

Alas, Facebook did not ask me to verify Robert's humanity before dealing him a blow that he announced on X this way:

"As 2024 ended, Meta permanently disabled my personal Facebook account, saying it 'doesn't follow our Community Standards on account integrity.' No idea why. My appeal was denied without explanation or recourse. Now I have no access to any of my content or contacts. What now?

Robert is integrity on steroids. I groped for something to say. "Oh, that's terrible!" is the best I could do. And it is terrible. I've been on Facebook for 16 years. Part scrapbook, part mnemonic device, both a block party and a shrine to my precious self. I look at Facebook far more than I look at the sky or the grass.

Then I did what any friend does for someone who suffered a loss. I phoned.

"It's traumatic; I'm grieving," Feder said. "The fact that they could just take it away, just like that, without any human intervention, is just appalling to me."

The incident might not be worth airing in public, were it not a glimpse of the world we are all hurtling toward. Someday, we will not just get booted off of social media but admitted to — or rejected from — college without human eyes ever weighing credentials or reading essays. Medical procedures will be permitted, or denied, without an actual doctor glancing at a file.

And we will comply, knowing the only thing worse than social media molding our lives will be suddenly being exiled from the garden.

"I'm trying to adjust to life after Facebook," Feder said, "to remind myself that I haven't lost everything."

Part of the sting is not knowing why he was cashiered. One of the last photos I recall seeing was Robert proudly holding his new granddaughter — could that be it? Improper display of a baby? The tot was clothed, wrapped in a blankie. I asked him if he had any idea what happened.

"They're saying I misrepresented myself, that I'm not who I am and am using it for improper purposes," he said. "I think it was the picture of Phil Donahue."

The pioneering talk show host. Robert sometimes posts articles about past media greats.

"An unauthorized copyrighted picture. I just grabbed it," Feder said. "That's what I think it is. But is a copyrighted photo the reason to be banished for life?"

I applied the salve of Seneca. We're going to lose everything, eventually — health, possessions life itself. Try to view any loss as practice.

"That really is how I feel," he replied. "It would never be easy, but if this gets me off cold turkey. How many hours have I spent reflexively going there? I'm in two worlds now. I hate losing it, but eventually, we do lose everything, and it's often not our choice as to when that happens."

Robert and I are both of an age when men suddenly drop dead. A reminder to not waste life but live it. Enjoy every sandwich, as Warren Zevon said. On your deathbed, you won't wish you'd spent more time on Facebook.

"Nobody died," Feder said. "I'd rather look at my granddaughter's face than look at Facebook. That said, it's a hell of way to start the New Year; 67,000 employees, without one we can contact for customer service."

I reached out to Facebook's alleged media representative: nothing. Facebook has claimed it has removed hundreds of millions of fake accounts. How many are later reinstated on appeal? A million? None? No one's telling.

The whole thing evokes the opening line of Franz Kafka's "The Trial" — "Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything wrong, he was arrested."

The novel never reveals what Josef K. is accused of doing. Maybe that's where Facebook got the idea.