modern social media security is hilarious

I've been on the internet a long time, so of course I have social media accounts. Do I use them? No. Very briefly, I recently tried using one again, and that went over like a lead balloon, so I just shelved it. More on that in a minute.

Originally, social media was used solely in the web browser, but that's not how they're intended to be used anymore. Every social media platform absolutely wants you to use their app on a phone. Were it up to the social media companies, they wouldn't even offer a way to use their systems with a regular web browser. So why haven't they dropped browser logins? I'll answer that later.

I'm going to talk about two social media platforms. The names of the platforms won't even be said because that doesn't matter, although I'm sure with barely any guessing you'll know what they are.

Platform A sends me emails (yes, plural) several times a week with the subject line:

12345678 is your password reset code

The reset code is obviously different each time.

Did I request a password reset? No.

And before you even think you know what caused this, no, you don't.

I do the dance of logging in and putting in my TOTP, go to the account settings to examine recent email communications, and there are two sections. Security emails and "Other".

These password reset emails are always under "Other" and never security, which means the email was never a security thing in the first place. It's something else.

I have been up and down and around this entire account several times, and it is not connected nor authenticated to anything anywhere else.

Have I changed the password before? Yes. Have I changed the email address to login with before? Yes.

Did that make any difference? No. These emails just keep coming. I have never figured out why this stupid platform keeps sending password reset emails over and over.

Even though the account has never been compromised, this has been going on for YEARS. Sometimes these password reset emails arrive every day, sometimes it's like it is now where it happens a few times a week, sometimes it's once every few months.

But make no mistake, they don't stop. Not for the long term, anyway. It's to the point where I have an email filter set up to put them elsewhere so I can examine them later instead of seeing them in my inbox all the time.

And no, there's no happy ending here. That's the best I can do to deal with this crap.

With Platform B, it's a different sort of hilarity.

I am shadowbanned on B. Did I do something bad to deserve that? No. Did I violate terms of service? No. Did I post anything I shouldn't have? No.

The reason I am shadowbanned on B is literally from doing absolutely nothing.

No, really, I'm not kidding.

I'll explain.

I signed up for this B account back in the late '00s, so oh yeah, it's old. I messed around with it for a time, but after some years said eh, I'll just set-private the account and maybe come back to it later.

Years pass without a single thing being posted to the account.

After a while, I login to the account. And because I wanted to be "SECURE", I thought okay, I'll set up TOTP because that's what you're supposed to do.

Platform B spits a notice at me stating if you want to enable that, cough up some money.

Um, no. Not happening. I logged out and let it collect dust again.

Another year or two passes until a month or so ago where I thought hey, I should try that platform B again since I still have the account.

I login, and whoa, NOW they graciously allow setup of TOTP for free like they should have in the first place. I set that up, and yep, working. Good.

After that, I make a few public posts, and none of them appear publicly at all. That's the shadowban part. My account is live, in good standing, has no terms of service violations, but nothing I post appears publicly. I can post, but anything I put there is only seen by an audience of one. Me. And bear in mind this is just family-friendly text posts with no links.

After some digging around, some others said yeah, a shadowban can happen when you "reactivate" a dormant account. Just post a few things for a week, and the shadowban should be lifted.

So I did that.

Nope. Still shadowbanned after a week.

Logged out. Screw that place.

On both platforms A and B, there is absolutely nothing that can be done to fix this crap.

On A, my tin foil hat senses are going off and I'm thinking the system purposely sends reset emails just to get me to login. And yes, this does make me wonder if anything truly bad would happen if I ignored those emails and just logged in once a week.

On B, I just gave up since there is no documentation anywhere on how to fix a shadowban there. Nobody knows, AI doesn't know either, so screw it.

There are two things I'm reminded of from these experiences.

First is my car navigation. Anyone who reads my stuff here knows I use a Garmin DriveSmart. The only time that thing ever connects to the internet is for system or map updates and that's it. And I know that is the reason it works as it should. Saved locations never vanish for no reason. I never have to login to the stupid thing. I just turn it on and go. No "required" internet connectivity = it just works.

Second is my email, which is self-hosted. Oddly enough, and hilariously enough, that really does seem to be the best way to use email. If my email was some "free" web-based email thing, that could and most likely would have glitchy problems similar to social media platforms.

This is my theory of why the social media platforms I use have glitches and/or shadowban crap going on:

It's because I don't use the apps social media companies want their entire user base to use. I use a browser.

Do social media companies purposely make it more difficult to use their platforms using a browser? I believe the answer is yes. With the "official" app, you have to deal with ads and all sorts of juicy personal info is sent over every time the app is used. With a browser, you can put on the brakes. Ads can be blocked, cookies can be deleted, and so on.

It would not surprise me in the slightest if all the security/shadowban crap I deal with magically fixed itself were I using the "official" apps for those A and B social media platforms.

But again, this is just a theory.

And why do social media platforms still support web browsers at all? I honestly don't know, especially considering it's obvious they hate them. My guess is that there still must be enough market share of web browser users to keep that support going?

In the end, for that A platform, I'll just keep filtering the emails. Whatever.

And for that B platform, it can go pound sand. Whatever.

Published 2025 Oct 30