Meta Has Spent Five Years Banning Me for Impersonating Myself

Let me tell you about the dumbest accusation anyone has ever made against me. Instagram disabled my account, the one with tens of thousands of followers, for “pretending to be someone else.”

The someone else was me.

I’m John Pozadzides. I’ve been John Pozadzides for 55 years. I’ve been John Pozadzides on the internet since before Instagram’s founders hit puberty. I built HTMLHelp.com in the 90s. I hosted a tech show that reached 30 million households in the US alone, not including global audience. I’ve run this blog for 20 years under my own name and my own face. There is a mountain of public evidence establishing exactly who I am, and Meta’s system looked at all of it, looked at me, and concluded: impostor.

And here’s the part that should scare you even if you don’t care about me. They’ve now done it three times, and I can prove, using Meta’s own records, that at least one of those bans happened to an account that contained literally nothing. Not one post. Not one comment. Not one like. Nothing.

The First Kill

Around December 2020, I tried to log into @johnpoz and got this instead: “Your account has been disabled for pretending to be someone else.”

I appealed through their “let us know” link. I pulled every string I had, and I had strings: press contacts, industry friends, people inside tech companies. Months went by with zero response. Not a rejection. Not a form letter. A void.

Then some random person registered @johnpoz for themselves. That account, the one actually using my name while not being me, is still up. Meta banned the real John Pozadzides for impersonation and then handed the name to a stranger. One not even using it. Chew on that for a second.

The Second Kill

Eventually I created @therealjohnpoz, because apparently I now needed to clarify. On July 26, 2024, Meta suspended it, citing “account integrity and authentic identity.”

The email said I had until January 22, 2025 to appeal, and helpfully included a “Review details” button. That button was a dead link. Literally broken. The alternative was to log in and request re-enablement, except you can’t log in, because the thing you’d be logging into is the account they disabled.

So the appeal process was: click a button that goes nowhere, or log into a login they turned off. For 180 days. Then the window closed, and by Meta’s rules the decision became permanent because I “didn’t take action.”

The Third Kill Is Where It Gets Truly Insane

On December 16, 2024, I created a third account, @johnpozadzides. I set it to private and posted nothing. It was a placeholder. I logged out the next morning at 9:08 AM.

At 9:43 AM, 35 minutes after I logged out and roughly 18 hours after the account existed, a Meta server process flagged it. Not a person. A process. I know this because I downloaded my official data export, and Meta’s own logs show the enforcement actions were executed by something identified as “C++/THttpClient.” That’s not a browser. That’s not a phone. That’s a machine talking to another machine about how I don’t exist.

The final execution came on June 17, 2025, at 2:57 in the morning. Same robot. No human had touched that account in six months, including me.

Now here’s the beautiful part. The ban notice reads: “Your account, or activity on it, doesn’t follow our Community Standards.”

Activity. On it.

I have Meta’s complete data export for that account (hell I attached it!), generated by their own Download Your Information tool. Every single activity category comes back empty. Posts: none. Comments: none. Likes: none. Messages: none. Stories: none. Searches: none. Followers and following: none. The export is a stack of files that all say “no data.” It’s the digital equivalent of arresting an empty room.

Meta’s system banned an account with zero activity for its activity, and when I clicked “How we made this decision,” it proudly announced: “Our technology found your account, or activity on it, doesn’t follow our rules. As a result, our technology took action.”

Their technology took action. At 2:57 AM. Against nothing.

What’s Actually Happening Here

Stupid people will say “you must have done something.” No. Follow the logic, because it’s not complicated.

Meta’s own Account Integrity policy says they disable accounts with “close linkage” to accounts that “violate or evade” their policies, and that enforcement is weighted by “the history of violations on the account.” Translation: once their system falsely tagged me as an impersonator in 2020, every new account I create matches that flag. Same name, same email, same location, same devices. The machine sees “banned impersonator made a new account” and kills it on sight. It never evaluates what I actually do, because I never get to do anything. The 18-hour execution of an empty account proves there was no content review at all. There was only an identity match against a lie the system told itself five years ago.

And here’s the detail that destroys any benefit of the doubt. Back when they first killed my account, Meta actually did ask me to verify my identity. I submitted everything they wanted, including the classic hostage-proof photo: me, holding up a piece of paper, with the exact text they told me to write on it. I did their ritual. I passed their test. And they killed the account anyway, then never responded to another word. So Meta’s position isn’t “we couldn’t confirm who you are.” Their system demanded proof I was John Pozadzides, received proof I was John Pozadzides, and then permanently banned John Pozadzides for not being John Pozadzides. There’s no version of that where a human being was involved.

And before you assume this is some rare glitch that only happens to me: it isn’t. NBC 5 in Dallas has been collecting these cases, people losing businesses, income, and years of photos to automated bans, unable to reach a single human at a company worth over a trillion dollars. In several cases Meta admitted its “technology made a mistake,” but only after journalists started asking questions. Ten of the 35 accounts NBC pushed on got restored. The lesson is grotesque: the appeal process doesn’t work, but embarrassment does.

The Bottom Line

A trillion-dollar company built a machine that decided the real me is a fake me, provided an appeal button that goes nowhere, gave my name to a squatter, and then spent five years automatically executing every account I create, including one that never did anything at all, while telling me its “activity” broke the rules. And at every single step, there was no human being anywhere in the loop. Just technology, taking action.

I don’t need Instagram. My life is objectively great without it. But I’m a guy with resources, media contacts, and 20 years of documented public identity, and I couldn’t get one human at Meta to look at this for five years. Now imagine you’re a photographer whose business runs on Instagram, or a normal person whose only copies of their kids’ photos live there. You have no chance. None.

So here’s what you can do. If this ever happens to you, skip the appeal button. It’s decorative. File with your state Attorney General, file with the BBB, or email a journalist, because apparently public shame is the only customer service department Meta operates.

Let AI format you something with all the info you can present to it. Here’s a document mine produced regarding this whole string of incidents, not that it’ll do any good for me whatsoever. Someone at Meta clearly has it out for me and wants to make my life hell.

And Meta, if your technology is reading this: I’m John Pozadzides. I’ve always been John Pozadzides. Fuck you.

Sources

• Meta Account Integrity policy: https://transparency.meta.com/policies/community-standards/account-integrity/
• NBC 5 Responds, “Meta users report disabled accounts and say AI made a mistake”: https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/nbc-5-responds/meta-users-continue-report-disabled-accounts/4014683/
• My original post documenting the first ban (Feb 28, 2021): https://www.facebook.com/realjohnp/posts/pfbid022T223rF4SBsg6Q6ZaDQMmt5jQij42km2BEHAJXaqCnFCcPGaZa1WLvZKA4tShrRWl
• My post documenting the second ban and the broken appeal link (Jul 26, 2024): https://www.facebook.com/realjohnp/posts/pfbid0GDEeSNVyKPL1u3F6y2qsUbHmwE6yHy28p7Bf9PooHS13nYafJyS2GAr4T5CBqi5fl
• Instagram, “About disabled Instagram accounts”: https://help.instagram.com/366993040048856