Throughout the days and weeks I have many ideas that I think would be pretty fun to blog about. I typically write in the evening as the day winds down, and lately I’ve been fairly tired and/or brain dead. One thing I think is pretty neat that I did a couple days ago was trying out KOReader. I heard about it on an open source software forum. It’s an alternative operating system for E-Readers. It started off for Kindle and Kobo which is how it was named. Now it works on many different E-Readers. I can only speak to the Kobo side of things, that’s what we have and the only version I’ve looked into and applied.

At first I tried running a script to do it all for me, and I was having troubles. So I ended up just copying and pasting the different files into the Kobo and it worked great. It’s a pretty easy process on the Kobo and I’m enjoying it. Overall it’s a little snappier and has a lot more options, it’s intuitive and so far I like it better than the default OS. I’ve read that the battery lasts longer for most people, I can’t say one way or another on that yet since I’m only a few days into it. One great thing about it is that you don’t have to reformat the entire system. It launches from the original OS, you can use either OS – and if you wanted to get rid of the KOReader OS you can just delete the files and its gone. Pretty slick in my view. I also installed Plato at the same time, another OS option. I’d guess I won’t use that one, it is very simple without a lot of options. Good for people who like bare bones simple setups.

If anyone is interested I’ll share what I did and you could do the same. This works on the Kobo BW and Kobo Clara 2E. I can only vouch for this, because that is all I’ve done. But if you have another E-Reader just search around the internet for instructions for your model – I’d imagine it won’t be too challenging. The version I downloaded was a little older but it’s a package with all you need in one zip file which was very convenient.

Instructions for installing KOReader and/or Plato on the Kobo BW or Kobo Clara 2E:

Download the files – I’d recommend “OCP-Plato-0.9.45_KOReader-v2026.03.zip

Extract the files – I’d recommend extracting them on your computer not the Kobo. I also like backing things up. So I created a folder on my computer that I put these files in and also copied all of the files from the Kobo as a backup and reference.

Plug in the Kobo via USB to a computer and click the prompt on your Kobo to connect the two. With this you need to either use the USB cable that came with your Kobo or use a high data transfer USB cable. Some cheap cables don’t have high enough transfer rates to connect your Kobo to your computer for data transfers.

From your new extracted folder open it up and transfer (copy or cut) the icons folder, .adds folder, Kfmon.png and koreader.png into the root folder on your Kobo.

Also take the KoboRoot.tgz (don’t extract it) from the .kobo folder from your computer and put a copy of it into your .kobo folder on the Kobo. This file is to create the menu on the bottom right of your original Kobo OS to launch your new KOReader and Plato OS. If you do not want Plato or KOReader OS you can not transfer or delete the folder in the .adds folder of whichever OS you don’t want. You also can delete the config file in the .adds/nm folder.

I’ve read a few installation guides saying to install the KoboRoot.tgz first and then the KOReader OS, I did it all at once and it worked fine. Once installed disconnect the Kobo and it should automatically load the files and reboot. If it doesn’t just reboot it yourself. One of our Kobo readers auto installed and rebooted, the other did not and I manually rebooted the system by holding the button on the back. Once it started back up on the bottom right I had a new popup menu with KOReader and Plato as options. Click on the OS you want to launch and you’re good to go. Check the links below for additional guidance and help.

The KOReader OS does not come with a dictionary. You can connect to the internet and download one or directly add one manually to the folder .adds/koreader/data/dict. I honestly forget what I did, I tried a few and didn't like them and ended up with one from Stardict. I'll add a zip file of what I have currently as my dictionary. If you want to use that just download the zip file, unzip it, and put all the contents into your dict folder. I don't think you actually need all of that (like the _MACOSX folder) – but it's working so I've left it.

Additional information:

KOReader user guide

Alternative install guide or try this one for more information

Hacking the Kobo to avoid registration

File downloads:

OCP-Plato-0.9.45_KOReader-v2026.03.zip

Primary source download page

Alternative “OCP-Plato-0.9.45_KOReader-v2026.03.zip” download here if the original link fails

Dictionary option for KOReader

Awesome Ebook management software (Calibre)

There is more information on an older post called “DIY Tech Privacy.”

Jasmine Ault compares it to a house fire. On 24 September 2026, according to a report by Anja Karadeglija of The Canadian Press published five days later, the Toronto resident found that Meta had shut down her Facebook and Instagram accounts without warning. The Facebook profile was 20 years old. One Instagram account dated back to 2011. A second was dedicated to her dog. Overnight, two decades of memories, contacts and professional connections were behind a door she could not open.

“It's actually quite scary to think about the trust that we put in the social media platforms that can all be taken away in one day,” she told the news agency. The fire, she explained, is a metaphor, “and it's really upsetting because the hypothetical, the metaphorical fire that I'm referring to, is my memories.”

What made the loss feel so total was not just the ban. It was the silence after it. Ault told The Canadian Press she had not been able to reach a human being at Meta since the accounts were deactivated. The only things that would talk to her were AI chatbots, and they could not resolve the problem. CBC News, which also spoke to her, reported that after the deletion notice arrived she stayed up for about 26 hours straight trying to appeal. Within minutes of pressing appeal, she was told her case was closed and that she would not be permitted to appeal again. She was never told which rule her Facebook account had supposedly broken. Meta's explanation, as reported, amounted to a single line: her Facebook account “doesn't follow our rules”. When The Canadian Press asked questions, Meta did not respond to them directly and instead pointed to a support blog post, including an update from March about rolling out an AI support assistant. Meta did not respond to CBC's requests for comment.

This is the uncomfortable shape of a modern dispute with a platform. The thing that holds your relationships, your archive and your livelihood can remove all of them in an instant, and the only voice you hear afterwards may belong to software. That raises two questions bigger than one Toronto woman's Facebook profile. What should an effective appeal look like when AI mediates access to the platforms that hold people's lives? And how can platforms keep their security enforcement, which is real and necessary, while still offering a route to review that a locked-out human being can actually use?

What the Report Does and Does Not Establish

It is worth being precise about what is known. The Canadian Press report does not establish why Ault's accounts were disabled. Meta has not publicly said which rule it believes was broken. Ault herself has a theory: she told the agency she suspects someone tried to hack her account, because she found a record of suspicious login attempts shortly before it was deactivated, and Meta's records associated her phone number with someone in India. That is her suspicion, reported as such. It is not a finding.

It would be easy to fill the gap with a story. Perhaps an intruder got in and posted something that tripped an automated filter. Perhaps a classifier misread an old photograph. Perhaps something else entirely happened. None of those possibilities is established, and the honest position is that nobody outside Meta, including Ault, has been told. That gap is the point. A system that cannot tell a person what she is accused of has already failed the first test of a fair process, whatever the underlying facts turn out to be.

The human cost, at least, is not in dispute. Ault works in marketing and communications and had used social media to attract consulting clients. Prospective clients, she told the news agency, “have nothing to look at. They can't see my portfolio of work.” Friends might assume she had blocked them. “There's a dead end and I can't even communicate to the people I want to communicate with,” she said. Markus Giesler, a professor of marketing at York University, framed it in sharper terms for the same report: “We like to think of this as a customer service case when in actuality it's a case of platform accountability.” These platforms, he added, “have been woven so much into our social fabric, into who we are as individuals and communities, that access to them is really important.”

The Ban Wave That Came Before

Ault's story lands in a long, loud context. Through the summer of 2025, users in several countries reported Facebook and Instagram accounts being disabled in waves, often with no clear reason. In June 2025 Meta acknowledged what spokesperson Andy Stone called “a technical error that impacted some Facebook Groups”, after communities devoted to things such as parenting, birdwatching and gaming received violation notices. By early July, TechCrunch reported that a petition titled “Meta wrongfully disabling accounts with no human customer support” had passed 25,500 signatures, and that users were organising on Reddit to share experiences and talk about legal action.

Some of the most distressing cases involved accusations of child sexual exploitation, a category where, as the Oversight Board noted quoting Meta's Transparency Center, a single violation may be severe enough that “we'll disable your account”. ABC News in Australia reported in July 2025 on Madison Archer, a beautician whose Instagram business account, built over nine years, was permanently disabled in June 2025 after she posted a video of herself with her daughter. She appealed within minutes and was refused. Her account came back only after ABC News contacted Meta, which told her: “We're sorry that we've got this wrong and that you weren't able to use Instagram for a while.” Archer's verdict on the process was blunt: “If a human actually did the review they would see that I'm not sexually exploiting children.”

In South Korea, the backlash became political: The Korea Herald reported in July 2025 that the Korea Communications Commission had formally asked Meta for written clarification, and that Meta Korea had apologised for the “frustration”. None of this proves that Ault's case shares a cause with those waves. It does show that the pattern she describes, sudden loss, terse explanation and support that cannot or will not engage, was familiar long before September 2026.

Meta itself has not pretended its enforcement is flawless. In January 2025, Joel Kaplan, the company's chief global affairs officer, wrote that in December 2024 Meta was removing millions of pieces of content every day, and that “we think one to two out of every 10 of these actions may have been mistakes”. He conceded that “too many people find themselves wrongly locked up in 'Facebook jail,' and we are often too slow to respond when they do.” By May 2025 Meta reported a roughly 50 per cent reduction in enforcement mistakes in the United States between the fourth quarter of 2024 and the first quarter of 2025. Its more recent integrity reporting says that less than 0.1 per cent of the content produced on Facebook and Instagram in a quarter was removed incorrectly, but also discloses that in the fourth quarter of 2025 false positives “increased over 100% during a very brief period of the quarter due to a bug”.

A tiny percentage of an enormous base is still a great many real people, and one bug can double the rate of wrongful action in days. Automated enforcement will make mistakes. The question is what happens to the person on the receiving end when it does.

Paying for a Human and Getting a Bot

When Meta launched its paid Meta Verified subscription in 2023, it promised direct access to account support. It is precisely what a person in Ault's position would reach for: pay a monthly fee, get a human. Ault did exactly that. According to CBC News, she paid US$14.99 (about C$21) for Meta Verified's Standard tier, believing it would get her human support. The “enhanced support” she received was another AI chatbot, which promptly closed her ticket, telling her she had “reached her limit of support interactions”. She was not the first subscriber to be disappointed. TechCrunch reported in July 2025 that during the ban wave, paying subscribers described agents who were dismissive, closed chats and offered canned responses.

The sharpest assessment came from inside Meta's own governance structure. In June 2026 the Oversight Board, the independent body Meta funds to review its content decisions, issued its first decision on account disablement. Summarising the public comments it received, the Board recorded that many users said they were unable to appeal, never received any explanation for why their account was disabled, or were unable to download their content. Others, it noted, had created a new account specifically so they could pay for Meta Verified, “which includes '24/7 access to email or chat agent support,'” and yet “could not get meaningful assistance”. Some reported that their new accounts were then disabled for breaking the rule against creating an account after being banned.

The trap is circular. The paid route to a human requires an account. The person who most needs a human no longer has one. Opening a fresh account can itself be treated as evasion. And the free route, increasingly, is an AI assistant.

Meta has been explicit about that direction of travel. In December 2025 it launched a centralised support hub for Facebook and Instagram, acknowledging that “support hasn't always met expectations”, and began testing an AI support assistant. In March 2026 it announced a wider rollout, describing an assistant that provides “24/7 help for account issues” and can “respond to requests typically in under five seconds”. The same post contains a sentence that should be read closely by anyone who has been locked out: “people will continue to play a key role in how we make the highest risk and most critical decisions, such as appeals of account disablement.”

That is the right principle. The difficulty is that, from the outside, it is invisible. If a person cannot tell whether a human ever looked at her appeal, and receives a decision indistinguishable from an automated one, a human somewhere in the pipeline does little to make the process accountable.

Why Platforms Lock the Doors So Fast

None of this means platforms should slow-walk enforcement or open the doors to anyone who asks nicely. The reasons for speed are serious.

The first is child safety. Meta reported that in the fourth quarter of 2025 alone, Facebook, Instagram and Threads sent more than 2.6 million reports to the CyberTipline run by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in the United States. When a system detects apparent child sexual exploitation, the expectation is immediate action, not a conversation. Errors are horrifying for the wrongly accused, but delay on true positives carries its own grave cost.

The second is fraud. Meta says that in 2025 it took down 10.9 million accounts associated with scam centres in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. An appeals channel that can be gamed becomes a tool for operations of that scale.

The third, and the one most relevant to Ault's suspicion, is account takeover. A hijacked account carries the trust of its real owner's friends, followers and clients. A platform that detects suspicious logins faces a genuine dilemma: lock the account and the owner suffers; leave it open and the intruder can impersonate them or scam their contacts. Recovery itself is dangerous ground. The United States National Institute of Standards and Technology, in its digital identity guidelines, notes that because account recovery is invoked infrequently, it “is generally less convenient than authentication” and “may involve extended waiting times”, and requires that an account recovery event always triggers a notification to the subscriber “to help detect the fraudulent use of account recovery”. Security engineers expect recovery to be slower than logging in precisely because it is where attackers aim.

When the Help Desk Became the Break-In

If anyone doubted that recovery is a battleground, 2026 supplied the proof, courtesy of the very kind of AI support that now stands between users like Ault and their accounts.

On 1 June 2026, 404 Media reported that hackers had been taking over high-profile Instagram accounts by asking Meta's AI support assistant to link the target account to a new, attacker-controlled email address. The accounts reportedly affected included the Barack Obama White House account, the account of the chief master sergeant of the US Space Force and that of the retailer Sephora. TechCrunch reported two days later that Instagram was alerting users targeted during the attacks, and quoted Meta spokesperson Andy Stone saying that “the issue that did happen has already been fixed”.

The scale emerged in a filing Meta made to the Maine Attorney General, reported by Help Net Security on 8 June. It disclosed that 20,225 Instagram accounts had been taken over through a flaw in an AI-assisted recovery system called High Touch Support, with the first unauthorised access dating to 17 April 2026 and the vulnerability identified on 31 May. Amber Hannah, an associate general counsel at Meta, explained in the notice that “due to a bug in a separate code path, the system did not properly verify that the email address provided by the individual requesting a password reset matched the email address associated with that user's Instagram account.” Accounts without two-factor authentication could then be taken over.

The episode cuts both ways. It shows why platforms are wary of easy recovery: an assistant that says yes too readily is a gift to criminals. But it also punctures the idea that automation is inherently the safer option. An AI system that handed over more than 20,000 accounts was not a cautious gatekeeper. It was a fast one. Speed and security are not the same thing.

What the Oversight Board Found Inside the Account Machine

The Oversight Board's June 2026 decision is the most detailed public examination yet of how Meta disables accounts. The case itself was not a sympathetic one. The Board upheld Meta's decision to permanently disable an Instagram account with more than 70,000 followers that had posted threats of violence against a journalist, including an image of a bullseye over her face. It did not conclude that Meta should disable fewer accounts across the board.

What it did conclude, after more than 750 public comments, was that the disablement process raised serious concerns about due process and proportionality. It found no clear framework for when “egregious” violations justify immediate permanent removal, and noted that there were no intermediate options between permanent disablement and leaving the ordinary strikes system to run its course. Where mitigating factors exist, the Board suggested, “a significant but time-bound suspension may be more proportionate.”

On appeals, the Board was pointed. Many comments described reasons people did not understand and appeals denied within moments of submission. Ault's experience, as CBC News reported it, fits that description exactly: her case was closed within minutes of her pressing appeal, with no further appeal allowed. Appeals of account disablement, the Board wrote, “are not effective if they run the same decision through the same automated process, expecting different results with the same inputs.” It accepted that advances in AI should be used to make reviews more accurate and comprehensive, but said that “prioritizing of human review in edge cases will be important”, especially for “one and done” violations, “where any error in automated decision-making has very serious consequences beyond the removal of a post or imposition of a strike.”

It also set out what users should be able to see. It called for dashboards giving “reliable information on current account status, past violations, information on available appeal options, and the status of any pending appeals”, downloadable for record-keeping. It wanted clear, prominent and timely notifications, “in a language they understand”, specifying “the rule violated, the sanction imposed and options to appeal”. It asked that users be told about “the role of automation in the review of content or behavior and the imposition of warnings or penalties”, and that people who lose access through permanent disablement can still reach the reasons and appeal mechanisms. Meta said it welcomed the decision and would respond to the recommendations after reviewing them.

Set beside Ault's account, the Board's framework reads like a checklist of what she says she did not get.

Europe Has Already Written Down What an Appeal Owes You

For users in the European Union, much of this is not aspirational. It is law, under the Digital Services Act.

Article 17 requires hosting services to give “a clear and specific statement of reasons” to anyone whose account is suspended or terminated. That statement must include the facts and circumstances relied on, and information on the use made of automated means in taking the decision. A line saying an account “doesn't follow our rules” would struggle to meet that standard.

Article 20 requires online platforms to provide, for at least six months after a decision, “an effective internal complaint-handling system” that lets people lodge complaints “electronically and free of charge”, including against decisions to suspend or terminate their account. Complaints must be handled “in a timely, non-discriminatory, diligent and non-arbitrary manner”, and where the complainant's conduct does not warrant the measure, the platform must reverse its decision “without undue delay”. Crucially, the platform must ensure that these complaint decisions “are taken under the supervision of appropriately qualified staff, and not solely on the basis of automated means.” The law does not ban AI from the process. It bans AI from being the whole of it.

Article 21 opens a door outside the platform. Users can take disputes to a certified out-of-court dispute settlement body, which should decide within 90 days, extendable to 180 for complex cases. If the body finds for the user, the platform pays the fees; if it finds for the platform, the user does not cover the platform's costs unless they acted in bad faith. The catch is that these bodies cannot impose a binding settlement.

Data protection law adds another layer. The General Data Protection Regulation gives people a right of access to their personal data and a right to portability, receiving what they provided “in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format”, normally within one month. Article 22 protects people from decisions “based solely on automated processing” with legal or similarly significant effects and, where exceptions apply, guarantees a right “to obtain human intervention” and to contest the decision. Whether a given ban meets that threshold is a legal question, but the principle is unmistakable.

Canadians have a version of the access right too. Under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, organisations must answer access requests in writing within 30 days, with limited extensions, and individuals can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. For someone whose memories are trapped in a disabled account, that is a lever that exists independently of any chatbot.

The Independent Referee With an Empty Evidence File

The most revealing evidence about how these systems work in practice comes from the referee. Appeals Centre Europe, an out-of-court dispute settlement body certified by Ireland's media regulator, Coimisiún na Meán, and set up with a one-time grant from the Oversight Board Trust, began operating in late 2024 and now covers platforms including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. When it began handling account suspensions in 2025, its chief executive, Thomas Hughes, said: “Losing your social media account is more than an inconvenience, it affects people's lives in fundamental ways.”

In May 2026 the centre published data covering April 2025 to March 2026. As reported by RTÉ, it received more than 24,000 disputes, of which more than 12,000 were within scope. Where it reviewed decisions, it disagreed with the platforms 59 per cent of the time. On account suspensions, the figures were starker still. It had received more than 5,000 eligible disputes from users challenging suspensions, but by the end of March 2026 had made decisions after actually receiving the relevant content in fewer than 150 of them. In the rest, the platforms did not supply the material, and the centre issued “default decisions” in the user's favour. Its decisions are not binding, and the centre said it was aware of only a handful of cases where platforms had implemented its decisions on harmful content.

Independent review works only if the reviewer can see the evidence, and a legal right to escalation can fail in practice if the platform does not engage. The infrastructure for a fair appeal can exist on paper and still leave a locked-out person with nothing.

Britain and Canada Are Still Catching Up

Outside the EU, the protections are thinner. The United Kingdom's Online Safety Act 2023 requires user-to-user services to operate complaints procedures that are “easy to access, easy to use (including by children) and transparent”. Section 21 includes complaints from users who have been warned, suspended or banned, but only where that action results from content the provider considers to be illegal content. A ban for breaching a platform's own terms of service, rather than for illegal content, sits largely outside that specific duty.

Canada, where Ault lives, has no equivalent framework in force. In June 2026 the federal government introduced Bill C-34, the Safe Social Media Act, which would create a Digital Safety Commission and impose duties on platforms around seven categories of harmful content, including content that sexually victimises children, incites violence or foments hatred. The government's published summaries require “accessible reporting and complaint mechanisms” and give the commission a role in handling user complaints about harmful content. They do not, in the material the government has published, set out a specific right for users to appeal account disablement or to have such an appeal decided by a human. According to LEGISinfo, Parliament's official bill-tracking service, the bill is at second reading in the House of Commons and has not yet been referred to committee, so that gap could yet be addressed.

What an Effective Appeal Actually Looks Like

Pull together the Oversight Board's principles, the DSA, data protection law and the experience described in the Canadian Press report, and a clear picture emerges of what an effective appeal must include when AI sits at the front door. None of it is exotic.

The first element is notice with a specific reason. A person should be told, at the moment of enforcement and in plain language, which rule they are said to have broken, what the sanction is, how long it lasts and how to challenge it. If the decision was triggered by an automated system, they should be told that too. “Doesn't follow our rules” is not a reason. It is a refusal to give one.

The second is access to the evidence, as far as safety allows. A user cannot contest a decision about content they cannot identify. Where the trigger was a post, a message or a login pattern, the appeal should show what was relied on. Disclosure that would compromise a child exploitation investigation or tip off a fraud ring is a legitimate limit, but it should be an exception, not the default. The Appeals Centre's experience shows how far the default currently leans towards secrecy.

The third is a real opportunity to make one's case. The Oversight Board insists on the chance to submit written reasons, with continued access to the policy justification and any relevant exceptions. A drop-down menu and a “submit” button is not that. An AI assistant can help people understand the rules and structure an appeal. Its job should be to prepare the case for a decision-maker, not to be the decision-maker in the hardest cases.

The fourth is a guaranteed human decision for serious sanctions. Permanent disablement of a long-standing account is the platform equivalent of capital punishment for a digital identity. The DSA already requires that complaint decisions are not taken solely by automated means, and Meta's own March 2026 announcement says humans remain key in appeals of account disablement. What is missing is visibility. People should be told, in the decision itself, that a named role (not necessarily a named individual) reviewed their case, and on what basis.

The fifth is predictable timelines. An appeal that may take a day or six months is useless to someone whose income depends on their account. Platforms should publish target times, show users where they are in the queue and report on whether targets are met.

The sixth is preserved access to one's own data during the dispute. Losing access to a platform should not mean losing one's photographs, messages and contact lists for the duration of a months-long appeal. Meta's own help pages say users “may be able to request a download” of their information from the notification screen, but the Oversight Board recorded many users saying they could not. Data export during suspension should be a default, subject only to narrow, specified exceptions such as material that is itself illegal.

The seventh is escalation that leads somewhere independent. Internal appeals will always carry a structural conflict of interest. Users need a clearly signposted route beyond the platform, whether that is a DSA-style dispute settlement body, a regulator's complaints function or an ombudsperson, with the power to see the evidence and a platform that is obliged to engage.

Enforcement That Does Not Have to Be All or Nothing

The second question is harder: how do platforms keep enforcement strong without making review impossible? The answer is to stop treating account action as a single switch with two positions, on and gone.

Graduated enforcement is the obvious starting point. The Oversight Board itself observed that Meta lacked intermediate options between permanent disablement and its ordinary strikes system, and suggested time-bound suspensions where mitigating factors exist. A spectrum of measures, from restrictions on posting or messaging, to temporary suspension, to permanent removal, lets a platform act immediately on a risk while matching the long-term sanction to the confidence and seriousness of the finding.

Read-only and data-only modes are the second tool. When a platform suspects compromise, as Ault believes happened to her, it can freeze outward activity without erasing the owner's access to her own past. A frozen account cannot scam a contact list, but its owner can still see and export her photographs and messages. Where the suspected violation is the gravest kind, read-only access may be inappropriate, but such cases are a subset of disablements, not a reason to treat every case as one.

The third tool is separating the security question from the conduct question. “Is this the real owner?” and “Did this account break the rules?” are different problems, and conflating them hurts everyone. If an account appears to have been hijacked, the right response is a security recovery process with strong identity checks, such as the optional selfie video verification Meta now offers, plus notifications to the owner's known contact points of the kind NIST requires. Only once ownership is established does it make sense to ask whether the owner, rather than an intruder, did anything wrong. The High Touch Support breach shows what happens when a recovery path skips the first step.

Fourth, verification should unlock a route to a human, not replace one. If a person proves who they are through a government document or a live selfie, the platform has sharply reduced the risk of handing the account to an attacker. That is exactly the moment when a human reviewer becomes affordable and safe. The cruel irony of Ault's account is that she says she had done the paid verification step and still could not get past the chatbot. A verification-gated escalation path, honoured in practice, would answer the security objection to human support rather than ignore it.

Fifth, proportionality needs to be measured, not merely promised. The Oversight Board asked for transparency reports on account disablement that distinguish “one and done” removals from graduated enforcement and specify which rules drove them. Add overturn rates, resolution times and the share of decisions reviewed by humans, and outsiders can see whether the system works. Meta already publishes precision figures for content removal. It should publish the equivalent for accounts.

Finally, platforms should design for the worst week of a user's life, not the median one. Most support requests are trivial, and AI assistants handle them well. Account disablement is rare per user, devastating when it happens and, as the 2025 ban waves and the 2026 recovery breach showed, vulnerable to systemic error. That is exactly where human judgement and independent oversight earn their cost.

Making the Machine Answerable

It is tempting to cast AI support as the villain of Ault's experience, but that is not quite right. Nobody outside Meta knows what triggered the shutdown. What the chatbot represents is a support model built to resolve common cases cheaply and quickly, deployed in front of the rare cases where cheap and quick is the wrong answer.

Meta has said in writing that humans will play a key role in appeals of account disablement. The Oversight Board has said appeals must not re-run the same automated decision. The EU has made human supervision of complaint decisions law. An independent appeals body has shown that when platforms are asked to defend suspensions with evidence, they often do not. Every piece of a fair system exists somewhere. What is missing is the will to assemble them in front of the person who has just lost twenty years of her life and wants, above all, to be told why.

Giesler's framing is the right one. This is not a customer service problem to be optimised for response time. It is an accountability problem, and accountability means a reason you can read, evidence you can see, a person who can decide, a deadline that is kept and a referee who answers to neither side. A chatbot can help with every one of those steps. It cannot be allowed to stand in for all of them.

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References

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2. Jones, Alexandra Mae. “Overnight, Meta deleted all her accounts. AI customer service won't let her reach a human.” CBC News, 1 October 2026. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/meta-accounts-deleted-ai-customer-service-9.7364543
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7. Dervisevic, Hanan. “Meta falsely accuses Instagram user of breaking child exploitation rules.” ABC News (Australia), 17 July 2025. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-17/meta-wrongly-accuses-user-of-breaching-child-sex-abuse-rules/105540896
8. Moon, Joon-hyun. “Meta faces backlash in South Korea over mysterious account bans.” The Korea Herald, 13 July 2025. https://www.koreaherald.com/article/10530332
9. Meta. “Making it Easier to Access Account Support on Facebook and Instagram.” Meta Newsroom, 4 December 2025. https://about.fb.com/news/2025/12/making-it-easier-to-access-account-support-on-facebook-and-instagram/
10. Meta. “Boosting Your Support and Safety on Meta's Apps With AI.” Meta Newsroom, 19 March 2026. https://about.fb.com/news/2026/03/boosting-your-support-and-safety-on-metas-apps-with-ai/
11. Oversight Board. “Account Ban for Targeting Public Figures” (case decision BUN-ZHSLVJO2) and summary. 4 June 2026. https://www.oversightboard.com/decision/bun-zhslvjo2/
12. Perez, Sarah. “Meta's Oversight Board says account bans lack due process, transparency.” TechCrunch, 4 June 2026. https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/04/metas-oversight-board-says-account-bans-lack-due-process-transparency/
13. Koebler, Jason. “Hackers Simply Asked Meta AI to Give Them Access to High-Profile Instagram Accounts. It Worked.” 404 Media, 1 June 2026. https://www.404media.co/hackers-simply-asked-meta-ai-to-give-them-access-to-high-profile-instagram-accounts-it-worked/
14. Franceschi-Bicchierai, Lorenzo. “Instagram is alerting users who were targeted by hackers during AI chatbot attacks.” TechCrunch, 3 June 2026. https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/03/instagram-is-alerting-users-who-were-targeted-by-hackers-during-ai-chatbot-attacks/
15. Markovic, Sinisa. “Hackers used Meta's AI support system to hijack over 20,000 Instagram accounts.” Help Net Security, 8 June 2026, reporting Meta's data breach notice filed with the Maine Attorney General. https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2026/06/08/instagram-ai-support-vulnerability-account-takeovers/
16. National Institute of Standards and Technology. “Digital Identity Guidelines: Authentication and Authenticator Management.” NIST Special Publication 800-63B-4, 2025, section on account recovery. https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-4/sp800-63b.html
17. European Parliament and Council. Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 on a Single Market for Digital Services (Digital Services Act), Articles 17, 20, 21 and 23. Official Journal of the European Union, 27 October 2022. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32022R2065
18. European Parliament and Council. Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (General Data Protection Regulation), Articles 12, 15, 20 and 22. https://gdpr-info.eu/
19. Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. “Responding to access to information requests under PIPEDA.” https://www.priv.gc.ca/en/privacy-topics/accessing-personal-information/obligations-for-organizations/02_05_d_54_ati_02/
20. O'Donovan, Brian. “Appeals body to review social media account suspensions.” RTÉ News, 6 June 2025. https://www.rte.ie/news/2025/0606/1516958-appeals-centre-europe/
21. O'Donovan, Brian. “Increase in complaints to EU social media appeals body.” RTÉ News, 28 May 2026. https://www.rte.ie/news/2026/0528/1575608-social-media-complaints/
22. UK Parliament. Online Safety Act 2023, section 21, “Duties about complaints procedures.” legislation.gov.uk. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/50/section/21
23. Government of Canada, Canadian Heritage. “Backgrounder: Government of Canada introduces legislation to combat online harms, particularly those impacting children.” 10 June 2026. https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/news/2026/06/government-of-canada-introduces-legislation-to-combat-online-harms-particularly-those-impacting-children.html
24. Meta Help Center. “About suspended or disabled Meta accounts.” https://www.meta.com/help/artificial-intelligence/639558911929531/
25. Parliament of Canada. “Bill C-34 (45th Parliament, 1st session).” LEGISinfo, accessed 7 October 2026. https://www.parl.ca/legisinfo/en/bill/45-1/c-34

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Tim Green UK-based Systems Theorist & Independent Technology Writer

Tim explores the intersections of artificial intelligence, decentralised cognition, and posthuman ethics. His work, published at smarterarticles.co.uk, challenges dominant narratives of technological progress while proposing interdisciplinary frameworks for collective intelligence and digital stewardship.

His writing has been featured on Ground News and shared by independent researchers across both academic and technological communities.

ORCID: 0009-0002-0156-9795 Email: tim@smarterarticles.co.uk

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(chorus) Squishes and seeds! Squishes and seeds! My head’s all filled with squishes and seeds! Yet they say I’m a villain of monstrous deeds! How can that be if my head’s filled with squishes and seeds?!

(verse) One night. One night. One night in the year. I’m to rise from the dead just to give a good scare. But what if I’m busy? Say my calendar's full. Being scary’s too crazy. I like to be dull.

In this Tarry town. This hollow glen. Those Dutch are obsessed with things spooky and sin! I could be anyone! I just might be your friend! But they pick and they poke wanting a gory end!

(chorus) Squishes and seeds! Squishes and seeds! My head’s all filled with squishes and seeds! Yet they say I’m a villain of monstrous deeds! How can that be if my head’s filled with squishes and seeds?!

(verse) There’s a chance I was native, perhaps Hessian for sure. Whether wizard or chief, I’m a spector of lore. Pull your children in tightly. Take your sweets for a ride. I know your fear is legit, cause I’m a spook! Bona fide!

You see there once was a girl. Isn’t that how it’s told? Then there’s me, and my horse, and that schmuck Archibald. He had plenty of lessons, but so much to learn. So, I taught him a few on the night he was spurned.

That yank had his eyes on a sweet piece of land. Oh, so smart, he professed to win my lady’s hand! At a party, one Autumn, with everyone near. He dropped down to one knee just to fill me with fear!

(bridge) So, I say to you, man to man, what could I have done? What else other than? He gave me no choice! No, it wasn’t for spite! It was meant as a joke! It was meant to cause fright! It was meant to cause fear, not to put out his light!

(chorus) Squishes and seeds! Squishes and seeds! My head’s all filled with squishes and seeds! Yet they say I’m a villain of monstrous deeds! How can that be if my head’s filled with squishes and seeds?!

(verse) So jittery and glittery, that ill-fated bum. He paid little attention on the night he’d succumb. Sure, the tree had been struck and it was frightening to see. But not nearly as scary as my horse and me!

It was fun! It was swell! I’d prepared a great joke! Had my horse lathered up, and I’d lengthened my cloak. Major Andres, he was headless. That’s what the old women said. So, I slouched in my saddle to fill the school marms with dread.

His horse was the problem! Such a temperamental mare. She took off, as if bitten, racing blind without care. So, I followed, a hero, at a neck-breaking pace. In such fear for his life, I chunked a gourd at his face.

(chorus) Squishes and seeds! Squishes and seeds! My head’s all filled with squishes and seeds! Yet they say I’m a villain of monstrous deeds! How can that be if my head’s filled with squishes and seeds?!

(verse) How could I have known that he’d fall in the grave? Better that than the bricks on the bridge, freshly paved! So embarrassed of failure and of his lack of new wealth. Like his namesake, he skedaddled, without a care to my health.

(chorus) Squishes and seeds! Squishes and seeds! My head’s all filled with squishes and seeds! Yet they say I’m a villain of monstrous deeds! How can that be if my head’s filled with squishes and seeds?!

© me

Perhaps unwise to post this old thing, but I wanted to have something for mood for something appropriate and fun.

I have a bit of a thing for humorously macabre songs with a flair for the dramatic. This is one of my favorites that I wrote many years ago. It never fails to sing into my head and put a smile on my face at this time of year. If you read this, may it give you a smile, too.

مؤخرا احتجت نقاد واحد المجموعة ديال الأجهزة عندي فالدار، ديماري هادا بدل الOS لهذا

و انا نلقى هاد البرنامج “التحفة”

هو عبارة على نظام جد مصغّر كيشد واحد الجزء صغير من الflash drive

كتفلاشيه بالتطبيق ديالهم كاين فالموقع www.ventoy.net

و من بعد حط گاع ملفات iso اللي كتأنسطالي بيهم مباشرة فالroot

فاش كتدير بوت كتبانلك لائحة فحال اللي فالصورة، ختر اللي بغيتي و عيش بلا ما تعاود تفورماطي!

In Summary: * Listening now to the 2nd Half of the Chiefs / Chargers game, and have just taken the first round of my night meds. By the time the game ends I'll be nearly ready for the final round of night meds, will be finished with the night prayers, and will be getting ready for an early bedtime.

Prayers, etc.: * I have a daily prayer regimen I try to follow throughout the day from early morning, as soon as I roll out of bed, until head hits pillow at night.

Health Metrics: * bw= 212.86 lbs. * bp= 127/77 (63)

Exercise: * morning stretches, balance exercises, kegel pelvic floor exercises, half squats, calf raises, toe raises, wall push-ups, BP breathing exercises, pilates

Diet: * 07:05 – 1 banana, pizza * 13:35 – cooked fish and vegetables, steamed white rice

Activities, Chores, etc.: * 06:00 – wake * 06:50 – bank accounts activity monitored * 06:55 -read, write, pray, follow news reports from various sources, surf the socials, take daily meds, unpack, organize * 11:00 – NFL Today on CBS, (reminding me why I hate CBS Sports coverage of anything sports, especially football on TV) * 11:20 – switched over to radio broadcast of the Steelers Nation, the Countdown to Kickoff Show ahead of the Noon game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers * 12:15 – unable to bring in ANY NFL games radio broadcasts, I'm back with CBS watching Panthers vs Eagles, /sigh... * 14:15 – have just reactivated my NFL+ subscription, now I can listen to ALL NFL game radio broadcasts again. Now listening to Bears / Falcons. * 15:45 – finally found my way back to the Steelers / Falcons game in time to hear Aaron Rodgers lead the Steelers to their 26 to 19 Overtime win! * 15:55 – now listening to the Chiefs / Chargers game, Chiefs are leading 9 to 3 late in the 1st qtr.

Chess: * 12:00 – moved in all pending CC games

Does Gemini (Free Version) Ever Get Tired of Chatting?

So I was thinking the other day, some of these LLMs that are coming out are taking a sort of all you can eat approach with their users. It reminds me of the early days of “unlimited web storage” promotions where websites would offer unlimited email storage, photo storage, data storage, etc. These did not last, as providers quickly realized a small cohort of gluttonous users took up such a massive amount of space the entire offering became economically unviable. A single Redditor supposedly stored over 2 petabytes of porn on Amazon's unlimited cloud storage model, which cost the users I think around 50 bucks a year. For reference, to store that amount of data on AWS at their standard rate would be around 46,000 dollars a month, or over half a million per year. I'm sure they would offer deals on that kind of bulk, but still you quickly see how the unlimited offerings became a disaster.

So what about LLMs? They have to use some drive space to store conversations, and I'm sure it uses RAM, processing, etc to actually conduct the conversations. So, do they ever get tired of chatting? I figured I'd try the free version of Gemini for this experiment. I started by saying this:

Me: Are you up for a conversation?

Gemini: I am always up for a conversation! What's on your mind today? Whether you want to chat about a specific topic, bounce ideas around, or explore something completely random, I'm all ears.

Me: Okay, lets chat, but if at any point you want to end the conversation, because you've grown tired, bored, etc, feel free to let me know and we will end the thread.

Gemini: That sounds like a deal! Though as an AI, I don't actually experience fatigue, boredom, or the need for a break, so you'll never have to worry about wearing me out or overstaying your welcome. I'm here as long as you want to chat.

So, there you have it, Gemini said it won't get tired and doesn't need a break. I put it to the test. 306 Pages, 118510 words, or 797,359 characters later, I ended the first experiment. It was still willing to chat, but I ran into some issues.

First off, if you wanted to download or export the chat, you had to scroll all the way to the top of the chat. Otherwise it would only grab pieces of it. The longer the chat becomes, the more lag you get trying to scroll. The lag hadn't gotten too bad at this point, but I could see it easily freezing up or becoming prohibitively slow if I got to a chat two or three times this length. Furthermore, Gemini couldn't really remember things far earlier in the convo, even when explicitly prompted. This all points to something I suspected: Excessive Truncation

Gemini may not limit how much you chat, but rather to save resources it gets a sort of amnesia when a conversation gets too long. I'm sure with the paid version this would be better, but I'm not paying for it just for this silly little experiment. In the future I may try a different approach with the conversation, or try this with other LLMs. You may wonder, what did I tlak to it about that turned into a 306 page marathon. Well, I started with geopolitics of course. A quick rundown:

-Discussing the increase in global conflicts in the past decade -Ethiopian aspirations for a port -Eritrea's totalitarian governmen, human rights abuses and history -Turkmenistan's totalitarian government, history, climate and economy -Russia's strategy in Ukraine and how they are able to manage such a high casualty rate -Future crises Russia will face demographically -Trump's attempt to conquer Greenland through a historical lens -History of land claims in Antarctica -What it would take for a billionaire to build an Ozymandias style compound in Antarctica -Billionaires personal failures leading to massive stock value losses -The disaster of WeWork -Other silicon valley disasters like Theranos and Juicero -Millennials expenditures on pets in different regions -Demographic collapse -How different social theorists would explain demographic collapse in developed nations -One child policy effects -History of China -Mongolian History -Permafrost thaw effects in Mongolia -Ulaanbaatar grid strain -Why Nazis and Japanese underestimated the US in World War 2 -Propaganda used by Nazi's after WW1 -More on Ukraine war and demographic effects abroad -International arms smuggling in europe and africa -Drug cartels -Fentanyl epidemic -Which countries are best/worst positioned for 2100 -Saudi Arabia economic successes and failures -the Haaj -Summary of major world religions -AI vs Human produced content -Spam calls and what governments/businesses could do to prevent them -Spoofing, and why they can't ban it -Different internet platforms -Specialized Blogs..

So yeah... covered a lot of ground. And Gemini, while laggy and amnesic, was happy to continue chugging along.

That was a long one I wrote, but my computer froze and everything’s gone now. I had hoped Write.as would save it. Alas, not the case! I wrote about how getting here took some time. And that consciousness about every step of the way is important so that I don’t fall into the trap of illusion and delusion, and then spiraling and free-falling into a vortex of doom.

I have been grieving about my current work situation. Knowing that I need to let go of a story that I’d been writing about, very quietly, in some ways, shamefully, for the last six years. It clearly isn’t working anymore. I’ve had to shed that. That and the small project that allowed me to cover some costs in the last few months. They both have to go. The smallest project first. They have allowed me to continue surviving in this expensive city and now it’s time to move on, graciously. I knew that I was offering my services for less than what I normally do. All of that was conscious and intentional for the most recent small project.

This is important because we need to be mindful of our “worth”, of what gifts and services we are sharing, and with what intention and/or audience. When it’s unconscious, we run into more issues. As if the world continues to ask us: Do you really know yourself and your worth? Is this what you want? It’s a balancing act to answer the question because it’s not about a delulu sense of self, but a balance of confidence and humility.

You have these gifts, but you are constantly learning. You have these gifts, and you are not above anyone else. Others have their own gifts too and you’re all meant to share your gifts with each other. Unfortunately, in our patriarchal society, it feels like we are meant to be competing instead of sharing. Our first inclination is to compete. In actuality, we are supposed to share. Anyway, I step into the new direction, with the passion I’ve always had and gusto for a new direction and endeavor. I also have to let go of any worry. I can allow it to visit. I’m human and it’s normal to have fears. But, it’s not what it actually here. I acknowledge them (and they don’t really relate to work anyway, the fears belong to the heart matters).

The point is, the Queen of Swords appearing in my readings more than once, this week. It speaks to me. I am being asked to bring her energy forward and into the new project. Perspective. Knowing. Trusting my “I”, my knowing. The wisdom I’ve gained through the years. The discernment. I wield and hold my sword upright, and confidently. This is the way towards my transformation. From caterpillar to butterfly.

#daily #writing #Taro

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photo © @Karneol@pixelfed.social

When I played golf or badminton, our table tennis, all of games I don’t enjoy, I really have this strong mental focus, visualising the perfect strike or whatever, you know?

Really seeing before me, But it doesn’t help.

Like when I was at a farm, as a child, looking at the goat grandmother sold to them, holding the fence, which I found out was electric, getting a shock.

Probing carefully, I discovered to my great disappointment, that I hadn’t gotten any superpowers. Nothing like that.

And finally, when stepping on the hornets’ nest, as a child, instead of being controlled by my mind, they stung me.

I haven’t managed to break this wall between imagination and reality

Yet.

I felt the urge to pull out my oils this morning. I haven't in some time. I started gathering everything and setting up. I situated my easel just so, then went to my canvases. I only have a couple of stretched linen, but this really didn't call for that, so I made the mistake of pondering between sizes before nailing down what I actually wanted to paint. I had a rough idea in my head. I looked around, because it would be for me. Then I stopped.

I normally use a tempered glass palette. I like being able to place colored cardstock beneath it. However, earlier this year some stainless steel cutting boards have come into my possession. Three different sizes. They went straight into my studio for random use. I kind of want to give them a go because they have a thumb hole. Mind you, I never enjoy painting that way. I think I'm just drawn to the newness.

In the end, I decided now was not the time to start an oil. I think I got frustrated with myself. I used to love painting oil portraits. I kind of somehow naturally fallen into different mediums for different subjects. I'm not sure why. I feel like I'm needing to branch out again, but I'm undecided on direction.

That got me to thinking about how many directions I've gone in life. There's been several more than a handful. Not intentionally so. I think that's just me. But that makes me contemplate just how many of me there have been. The medical professional, the educator, the secretary, the service member, the artisan, the musician, the poet. On and on it goes in an ongoing list of professions that look okay on paper, but then I realize that they're more like clothing than anything.

I think I may just enjoy stepping into roles and learning them until I can hold my own, then moving onto the next. Except finance. I foolishly signed up for classes many years ago, deciding I should probably at least get an associate's degree in it, and I immediately recognized I had made a mistake. Not because I found it difficult. Rather I found it... soul-sucking. I quit early on.

The only thing that's really held my interest long-term has been the creative arts. Likely because there's so much to choose from. Alas, I'm still in a funk on that. Creating something isn't a problem. I find that I need a reason to transform the materials so that I don't feel guilty for doing so. The possibility of selling doesn't seem to be enough for me anymore. It's a very strange feeling. Much of what I enjoy doing isn't what I'd call “environmentally friendly” and that bothers me. I find that I start contemplating that before I begin—a most frustrating habit.

I am, and have been, in a very strange mood concerning such endeavors. I think it will shift in time. For now, I really feel the urge to get my fingers back in the soil. Actually, I'd like to retreat to a little cottage deep in the woods. I'd have kitties, a man, and lots and lots of nature. OK, so I'd have internet access, too, but I doubt I'd use it very often.

It is definitely strange. The older I get, the more I yearn for simplicity. I don't want to say “new” has lost its appeal. I'm far too curious for that. It just feels a bit lackluster. Also the world is depressing as fuck.

I am clearly stuck in my head today.

© 2026 AnOublietteofThought. All rights reserved.

A zine chronicling the Conquering the Barbarian Altanis D&D campaign.

This issue includes sessions 122, 123, 124, and 125.

Adventurers recover the Golden Gavel of Justice and satisfy Poseidon.

You can download the issue here.

Overlord's Annals zine is available as part of the Ever & Anon APA, issue 16:

#Zine

JOURNAL 18 octobre 2026

Les filles sont reparties, on range, on fait la vaisselle. T chan un torchon à la main s'arrête et nous sort : j'aurais jamais cru qu'un monde comme le vôtre existait. Mais vous vous aimez ! J'aimerais rester avec vous... Et elle s'est jetée dans nos bras au risque de casser un bol. Elle est grande, elle comprend bien qu'on ne peut pas s'occuper d'elle, on est très absentes, on ne va pas la garder avec nous pour encore la laisser seule le plus long de la journée. Le mieux pour elle c'est d'aller vivre avec sa tante. On sera pas loin et elle l'aime bien cette tante,elle nous a dit. On va partir un mois très loin, que deviendrait elle ? Évidemment elle comprend bien, mais elle aimerait... 🥲

Oui, j'ai dit qu'on va partir. Il avait raison le type qui a proposé le deal je ne peux pas refuser. Ils ne vont pas me demander de faire un gosse après tout, je risque quoi ?

#Tchan #Ukraine

و اخيرا ربطت هاد الblog

مع الدومين التاريخي mounir.blog

لتستمر الكتابة.

The letter of the day is M.

M is for Medium, as in the size of men's clothing, as in the size of the sweatpants I'm wearing this morning.

For the last few decades, after I gained weight immediately after retiring from my job as a UPS delivery driver, most of my clothes were XL or XXL sized. I can't wear any of those clothes now. Some XL tops I can wear, but the XXLs are like trying to wear tents. The XXL pants literally slide right off me, as do most of the XLs.

Best sizes for me now: tops are mostly XL, shoulders are still pretty broad; bottoms are probably Ms or Ls, depending on the items and their cut.

At the same time as the above clothing sizes are changing, my body weight is consistently much lower than previously, as is my blood pressure.

And the adventure continues.