Facebook Deleting 10 Million Accounts – What to Do if Yours is Deleted

(KMDL-FM) Social media has all the appeal of a good bloody car wreck. Okay, maybe it's a train wreck. Whether you're in the big cities of Dallas, Houston, or San Antonio in Texas, or the smaller communities of Zwolle, Estherwood, or Deridder, almost all of us share the same opinion of social sites like Facebook, Instagram, X, and TikTok. That opinion? We love to hate the platform.

Well, maybe it's not the platform we hate, but rather the people who post to it that bother us. Okay, it's not all the people, but you know "those people," the ones who are always spreading fake news, malicious lies, demonstrating their new manicure by placing their hands on their butts, or those who "influence" on topics no one needs to be influenced on. Those are the people we don't like on social media.

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Believe it or not, Facebook and its parent company, Meta, don't care for all the people and profiles on their platforms either. That's why, since the beginning of the year, Facebook has deleted about 10 million profiles. To put that in realistic terms, that would be like deleting all the people in New York City, with a couple of million left over.

Why Is Facebook Deleting Millions of Accounts?

If you're wondering why you haven't heard more whining about the accounts being deleted, it's because a large number of those accounts that were removed were found to be engaging in "spammy behavior and fake engagement". In other words, the sites were fake or a facade for misinformation.

But anytime you do a mass delete, there are bound to be innocent accounts caught in the crossfire, and if you happen to be the administrator for one of those accounts that was deleted but should have been, you do have recourse.

What Should You Do If Your Facebook Account Was Mistakenly Deleted?

The first thing you should look for, perhaps in your "spam" filter, is an email from Facebook or Meta; they should have sent one to you letting you know the profile was going to be deleted. If you didn't get that email and your account was deleted anyway, you still have 180 days to appeal the suspension.

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If you don't take any action or reach out during that 180-day time frame, then your account will be deleted permanently. Chances are, if you don't notice the account hasn't been active for six months, then you probably weren't really using it, were you?

Facebook and Meta say they hope the purge will clean up and invigorate the platform to make it a place where individual content thrives and content creators are rewarded for their hard work and creativity. Those are high expectations, but these are the first steps in getting there.