The New York Times International - 27.08.2019

THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION TUESDAY, AUGUST 27, 2019 | 7

Business

For a decade, Christopher Reeves, an
Uber driver in Seattle, used Facebook
for everything: talking with friends,
communicating with fellow drivers,
meeting singles. But one day in June, as
he was uploading photos from a comic
book convention and a family trip to Dis-
neyland, he found himself abruptly
logged out.
When Mr. Reeves, 32, tried to sign
back in, the Facebook page said that his
account had been disabled. It requested
a photo to verify his identity. He took a
selfie with his iPhone, but Facebook re-
jected it, as well as several other self-
portraits. Eventually he gave up and
sought out a page in Facebook’s help
center for people who think their ac-
counts have been disabled by mistake.
He provided his name, email address
and a photo of his driver’s license.
Days passed. Mr. Reeves heard noth-
ing. He searched in vain for a way to talk
to a human at Facebook. He sent Twitter
messages to Facebook and was ignored.
After a week of growing increasingly
frustrated, he went to Facebook’s office
in downtown Seattle, where, he recalled,
five receptionists sat behind a counter in
the lobby.
“My account got disabled, and I need
help,” he said. The workers told him no
one could assist him.
“What if my account doesn’t get reac-
tivated?” Mr. Reeves asked, desperate.
A receptionist advised him to make a
new profile. (That’s against Facebook’s
terms of service, which specify that us-
ers “create only one account (your
own).”)
Mr. Reeves created a new account,
but it was disabled within hours; when
he made yet another one, it was disabled
within minutes. It’s now been three
months, and he has no idea why he’s still
unable to log in.
“Life is rather dull without Facebook,”
Mr. Reeves said.
While many users are abandoning
Facebook, fed up with what seems like a
never-ending series of privacy vio-
lations, a small number find themselves
in the opposite position. They’ve been
kicked off the platform, and no matter
how hard they try — and they try really,
really hard — they can’t get back on.
In March, Jessica May, 33, an activist
based in Maryland, found herself logged
out by Facebook and presented with a
request for identification. Ms. May was-
n’t surprised; trolls often falsely re-
ported her for violating the site’s rules,
and she had been through the account
reactivation process many times. This
time, though, Ms. May’s attempts to re-
gain access didn’t work. She’s now sign-
ing into Facebook with a second, profes-
sional account that she created a couple
of years ago but rarely used.
When Ms. May researched the issue
online, she found countless others in the
same position. “You’re holding our so-
cial network hostage, along with our
memories,” she complained in a
YouTube video she posted in hopes that
someone from Facebook would see it. “I
have so much to say and so much to
share. What the hell did I do? I just want
to know. But it’s radio silence.”
In Facebook’s version of a justice sys-
tem, users are told only that their ac-
counts have been disabled for “suspi-

cious activity.” If they appeal — via a

terse form that will accept only a name,

contact information and an image of an

ID — a mysterious review process be-

gins. The wait can be endless, and the in-

ability to contact a Facebook employee

maddening. Increasingly agitated,

Facebook castaways turn for help to

Twitter, Reddit, Quora, message boards

and, well, me. Because I have a history

of writing about (and sometimes solv-

ing) people’s troubles with the platform,

profoundly addicted Facebook users

have found their way to my inbox, email-

ing multiple times a day for updates

about their cases, which I do not have.

With more than two billion active

members, Facebook has long been criti-

cized for allowing bad actors to prolifer-

ate on its platform, including violent ex-

tremists and identity thieves. In May,

the company announced that it disabled

more than three billion “fake accounts”

over a six-month period. “Our intent is

simple: find and remove as many as we

can while removing as few authentic ac-

counts as possible,” wrote Alex Schultz,

Facebook’s vice president for analytics,

in an accompanying post.

It’s possible that users like Mr. Reeves

and Ms. May were caught up in the

sweep. But the number of people com-

plaining about disabled Facebook ac-

counts has been going up for years, ac-

cording to data from the Federal Trade

Commission, which tracked three such

complaints in 2015, 12 in 2016, and more

than 50 in each of the last two years.

Once Facebook disables an account,

Mr. Schultz wrote, it keeps the person

behind it from rejoining by deploying

“advanced detection systems” that look

for “patterns of using suspicious email

addresses, suspicious actions, or other

signals previously associated with other

fake accounts we’ve removed.”

Travis Hinton, a dishwasher in New

York who has used Facebook since 2012

to stay in touch with friends and to write

posts about abandoned subway sta-

tions, found this out the hard way. After

his account was disabled in July, he tried

repeatedly to create new accounts using

a series of new email addresses and

found that the new accounts were dis-

abled almost immediately.

Mr. Hinton, 34, found the company’s

phone number and called it. “For

customer support, press 1,” said a voice

recording. Hinton pressed 1. “Thank you

for calling Facebook user operations,”

he heard. “Unfortunately, we do not of-

fer phone support at this time.” Then his

line went dead. (This is still the message

a caller receives.)

Mr. Hinton is incensed at being locked

out of Facebook. He’s repeatedly

tweeted obscenities at Facebook on

Twitter and written angry, profane com-

ments on Mark Zuckerberg’s Instagram

posts. (Mr. Hinton didn’t lose his access

to that social network, even though it is

owned by Facebook.) He also tries to

create new Facebook accounts — on dif-

ferent computers and phones, and at dif-

ferent locations — on a weekly basis,

only to find them disabled within min-

utes.

“Keeping our platform safe from bad

actors is our highest priority,” said a

Facebook spokeswoman. “Our detec-

tion technology isn’t perfect and some-

times we make mistakes. But we offer

people the tools they need to regain ac-

cess.”

When Facebook reviewed 14 disabled

accounts belonging to users contacted

by The New York Times, the company

said that just five had been banned with

cause. Facebook suggested that the oth-

ers should simply go through the ap-

peals process again; most did, but none

of their accounts have been reactivated

so far.

Some of the excommunicated have

woeful tales, such as Colton Berk, 23, a

barista in Portland, Ore.

His account was disabled in 2017, a

few months after his older brother was

killed in a car accident. “It was a real

panic moment,” Mr. Berk said. “I hadn’t

saved a lot of photos that I had posted of

my older brother and me, and I lost it

all.” He appealed to Facebook, which

told him that his account was perma-

nently disabled for “fraudulent activity.”

Mr. Berk has since gotten back online

with an alias: Bolton Cerk. “I had to as-

sume a fraudulent identity to rejoin,” he

said. “Ironically, I am now doing what

they accused me of.”

One Facebook user in Sweden found a

way to reach a human at Facebook after

his account was disabled. His first name

is Jonatan; he asked that his last name

not be published, so that he wouldn’t be

contacted by a deluge of other users

seeking help. “I did it through the job ap-

plications,” he said, laughing. Jonatan

went to Facebook’s careers page and

filled out an application for a lead devel-

oper position, but instead of talking

about his qualifications, he wrote about

not being able to reactivate his disabled

account.

A couple of days later, Jonatan got an

email from a Facebook recruiter who

told him that, while it wasn’t the proper

channel for the problem, he would look

into Jonatan’s account. It was soon reac-

tivated. “I rarely use Facebook now,” he

said.

Mr. Reeves, of Seattle, is not so blasé.

After reviewing his account at the re-

quest of The Times, Facebook deter-

mined he was inadvertently “caught in a

security checkpoint.”

But Mr. Reeves remained stuck in

purgatory. At one point in early August,

he apologized for contacting me so of-

ten, explaining that he was “desperate”

to have his account reactivated by Aug.

15, his birthday.

On Aug. 14, Reeves went back to the

Seattle Facebook office to beg them

again for attention. The receptionists re-

peated that they couldn’t help him, and

said that no one in customer support

worked in the building. “I was frus-

trated, but I stayed calm,” Mr. Reeves

told me. “I didn’t scream or anything. I

didn’t want to spend my birthday in jail.”

Kicked off Facebook and wanting back on

They don’t know why

they’re barred and can’t

find anyone to tell them

BY KASHMIR HILL

SARAH MAZZETTI

“I had to assume a fraudulent

identity to rejoin. Ironically,

I am now doing what they

accused me of.”

IPhones haven’t been selling particu-
larly well, Apple reported this summer,
but its watches are becoming wildly
popular. And no wonder.
The Apple Watch is elegant and
versatile, and it frequently gains new
powers. It can track the distance you
run, measure the noise you hear on the
street, record your heartbeat, play
your favorite tune and place a phone
call. (Yes, it can even tell time.)
New models of the watch, and of the
iPhone, are expected in September.
How they fare in the marketplace will
help to determine whether Apple con-
tinues to be one of the most valuable
companies in the world.
But impressive though the con-
stantly updated Apple Watch may be, I
don’t wear one, at least not yet. In-
stead, I’m sticking with a classic Casio.
In its own modest way, it is a marvel,
too.
Casio says my spare, black,
monochromatic watch will operate
smoothly for at least seven years
without needing a battery charge. And
the Casio watch is uncannily accurate.
It doesn’t gain or lose more than three
minutes in an entire year.
Perhaps most important, it is aston-
ishingly cheap, a claim that I wouldn’t
make for any Apple product. The
F-91W Casio that I wear has a list price

of $18.95; I bought it for less than $11.

A slightly more elaborate sport watch,

the DW-290 favored by the special

counsel Robert S. Mueller III and his

deputies, can be bought for about $35.

Those are bargain-basement prices

compared with the $279 to $1,499 that

Apple charges for the current models

of its watch.

In this era of rampant planned obso-

lescence, the Casio watch remains a

remarkable outlier: a once-advanced

device that has been available for a

quarter-century and

still does exactly

what it was designed

to do.

Still, my Casio is

limited in what it can

do: It is just a watch.

Basically, it reports

the time, date and

day of the week, and

it functions as a little

alarm clock and as a

stopwatch. Press a

button and it lights up in the dark. I’ve

worn it in the shower, in swimming

pools and in the ocean, although such

behavior isn’t recommended. The

watch isn’t guaranteed to survive

immersion.

Sturdy as it is, the watch won’t last

forever. You can replace the battery

and the plastic resin watch band, but

I’ve found that doing so can be tedious.

Since Casio introduced the F-91W in

1989, I’ve owned several, and some of

its cousins, which date to the 1970s.

Casio called them technological mir-

acles back then. It is their continued

availability at reasonable prices, not

their aging technology, that makes

them minor miracles today.

Replacing the originals was my

choice over the decades; it wasn’t

forced on me by Casio.

“Repairing devices is better for the

planet than buying new ones,” said

Kyle Wiens, a founder of iFixit, a web-

site with do-it-yourself manuals and

other resources geared toward teach-

ing “people how to fix almost any-

thing.” Mr. Wiens contrasted Casio,

which makes battery replacement a

straightforward if delicate task, with

companies like Apple, which directs

consumers to the company’s own

stores or certified technicians.

“These companies are deliberately

making it more difficult for people to

repair their devices,” he said. “And

they push people to replace existing

devices that work perfectly well. That’s

planned obsolescence.”

Michael Waldman, a Cornell Univer-

sity economics professor, expanded on

that idea.

“I would define ‘planned obsoles-

cence’ as the practice of coming out

with innovations more quickly than is

efficient from the standpoint of social

welfare,” he said. “For a company, it’s a

way of maximizing profits, perhaps at

some cost to consumer welfare.” By

that definition, he said, Apple is engag-

ing in planned obsolescence, while

Casio is not.

Consider what will most likely hap-

pen in the fall, when Apple introduces

new operating systems. The company

says iPhones that can handle that

update will be able to operate in “dark

mode.” That should cut back on emis-

sions of light and, perhaps, ease eye

strain.

I’d like to use dark mode but I can’t,

unless I reach for my wallet. That’s

because my iPhone 6, and older

iPhones and iPads, won’t be compati-

ble with iOS 13.

If you’ve got an older Apple device,

though, at some point it won’t be able

to do everything it does now. I’ve

experienced that with an older iPad

Mini. Eventually, I found that it could

no longer display all of the news re-

ports to which I subscribed, and I

replaced it. That will probably happen

with my iPhone 6.

As I wrote last year, I’ve been able to

hold onto the phone this long only

because of a battery replacement

program that Apple instituted after

reports that it was throttling the

speeds of older devices. The company

is being sued by people who accuse it

of deliberately shortening the working

life of its products. Apple denies the

accusations.

These days, in an effort to encourage

purchases of new phones, Apple is

buying back older iPhones that it

refurbishes and resells, often to people

living outside the United States.

Is it coincidental that just as iPhone

sales have stalled, Apple is effectively

pushing people like me into buying

new phones? Maybe. But using multi-

ple levers — style shifts, marketing

and changes in design — to persuade

consumers to replace products is an

effective and longstanding strategy.

That’s not true for just Apple, but for

other technology companies, carmak-

ers and razor blade manufacturers.

Planned obsolescence has been prac-

ticed for decades but it has been ele-

vated into a corporate art form.

That’s why it seems to me that sim-

ply creating good, inexpensive prod-

ucts that rarely need to be replaced

has become an extraordinary accom-

plishment. Yet Casio, whose sales have

been flagging, doesn’t boast about its

practices. The company declined to

comment for this column.

The stock market favors Apple’s

approach, not Casio’s. In the five years

through Wednesday, Casio’s share

price has dropped more than 20 per-

cent. The price of Apple stock has

more than doubled in that time.

Daniel A. Levinthal, a professor of

corporate strategy at the Wharton

School of the University of Pennsylva-

nia, said: “Given a choice, most com-

panies would rather be in the position

of Apple, which has been innovating

and successfully developing new prod-

ucts and bringing them to market and

getting consumers to buy them — than

in the position of Casio, which has been

much less successful at that, even if it

is selling some fine products.”

That makes the retro Casio watch

even more special. It doesn’t belong

entirely to this time.

Planned obsolescence becomes an art form

Strategies

JEFF SOMMER

The Casio F-91W watch is a marvel in its own modest way. But the stock market prefers

Apple’s approach to technology, which brings frequent product turnover.

TONY CENICOLA/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Using varied

levers to

persuade

consumers

to replace

products is

an effective

strategy.