Ask HN: How do you create a Facebook account?

2 pointstuyguntn9mo ago7 comments

Sounds strange right?

For the last 2 weeks I wasn't able to create a facebook account, because it banning all my different personal emails, including with my own custom domain and gmail emails.

How do you sign up for facebook account? Are there any humans left in Facebook?

I am trying to create an account for my business but using my personal details. How do other businesses register/create account?

7 comments

PaulHoule9mo ago

I think neither Facebook nor Instagram will let you create an account that isn’t tied to a phone. They don’t quite give a clear explanation of this.

If I was trying to create a social media site in 2025 I’d be trying to grease the skids to make it as easy to sign up as possible, but Facebook has the problem that it probably has more people trying to create smurph accounts than trying to sign up for the first time.

tuyguntnOP9mo ago

there might be a correlation in the demographic chart to what you are saying: https://recurpost.com/blog/facebook-statistics/

largest chunk seems to be between 25-34, who got their accounts setup, younger generation going to tiktok/snapchat, older generation (like myself) giving up creating an account probably

PaulHoule9mo ago

There's demography but also the fact that if I have a site with 1,000 users I can dream of a total addressable market of 1,000,000,000 or so. The most important thing is to get enough users to "prime the pump" where they start filling out content and there is somebody to interact with.

Circa 2000 or so the usual advice to give the business people was "base your register and login flow on Yahoo" because Yahoo had done the usability work and people were familiar with it. By 2007 or so this was terrible advice because Yahoo was facing terrible problems with account takeovers, smurph accounts and controlling bad behavior and was making login harder, not easier.

I think Facebook is in the same place today.

I nuked my Facebook account in 2016 but made one a year ago to go with my Meta Quest 3. It's amazing how bad the "new user" experience is when they don't have any data on you -- on the other hand, they don't care about onboarding anymore because the stragglers like you are people who are creating a Facebook account for a reason. Instagram, on the other hand, should be proud of their cold set because they really do have a few 100 really amazing things to show you on day one. If only they realized that (i) I don't want to engage with OnlyFans models, and (ii) if I did it would be more like Ely EEE than the ones they show me...

tuyguntnOP9mo ago

I am constantly seeing an appeal screen with this message:

    XYZ, you submitted an appeal
    Check back here for the result.
    Your account is not visible to people on Facebook, and you can't use it.
    ...

after 2 days, I see account banned message. Tried with bunch of my personal emails with different domains, on a different locations with different IPs.

mickelsen9mo ago

They do some fingerprinting on your browser too, and customs setups stick out, so try a vanilla profile with no extensions. I also think their trust score goes down and scrutinizes you more if you block trackers, ads or some APIs.

jqpabc1239mo ago

Facebook is just attempting to do you a favor.

tuyguntnOP9mo ago

Yes, I know :)

But I need it for my business

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

7 comments

PaulHoule9mo ago

I think neither Facebook nor Instagram will let you create an account that isn’t tied to a phone. They don’t quite give a clear explanation of this.

tuyguntnOP9mo ago

there might be a correlation in the demographic chart to what you are saying: https://recurpost.com/blog/facebook-statistics/

largest chunk seems to be between 25-34, who got their accounts setup, younger generation going to tiktok/snapchat, older generation (like myself) giving up creating an account probably

PaulHoule9mo ago

I think Facebook is in the same place today.

tuyguntnOP9mo ago

I am constantly seeing an appeal screen with this message:

    XYZ, you submitted an appeal
    Check back here for the result.
    Your account is not visible to people on Facebook, and you can't use it.
    ...

after 2 days, I see account banned message. Tried with bunch of my personal emails with different domains, on a different locations with different IPs.

mickelsen9mo ago

jqpabc1239mo ago

Facebook is just attempting to do you a favor.

tuyguntnOP9mo ago

Yes, I know :)

But I need it for my business

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse