What’s Wrong with My Angels?
Reflections on a Cyber Nightmare
What is wrong with my angels and guardians that they let us get cyber-robbed twice in one year?
Are we not praying enough?
Are we not working enough?
Maybe I’m working too much?
Or am I just getting too old to be engaging in business in this cyber-scary world?
Those questions haunted me thirty-some days ago when I clicked on a link I shouldn’t have, and in an instant, our ten-year-old Facebook following disappeared into the hands of a hacker from Pakistan.
The Horror Unfolds
During the first week, I watched in horror as they changed our page’s name to a Dakota Johnson fan page. By the second week, our content was being deleted. I had to stop watching. When it first happened, I went on the page and posted, “This page has been hacked!” That got me blocked, so I could only watch the destruction through the phones of the other sisters.
A Look Back: Social Media Then and Now
Eighteen years ago, when I was living in Atlanta, Georgia, with three middle-schoolers as a single mom, social media was a new phenomenon. Back then, platforms like Facebook and Twitter were just emerging, while giants like Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat didn’t even exist.
In 2006, Facebook was limited to college students, MySpace was at its peak, and Twitter had just launched. Today, these platforms have billions of users globally, with Facebook alone surpassing 2.9 billion users.
Content and Influence: Social media in 2006 was more text-based, focusing on personal connections. Today, it’s all about multimedia content, influencing public opinion, commerce, and culture. Social media has evolved from a niche activity to a dominant global force.
Monetization: Back then, monetization was minimal. Today, it’s a multi-billion-dollar industry, with sophisticated ad targeting and influencer marketing driving significant revenue.
Having just moved back to America from Europe in 2006, after a decade of consulting overseas, I was on the phone with an American colleague, searching for ways to re-launch my consulting company. He explained the coming social media phenomenon to me. At the time, I didn’t even have a single social media account. It wasn’t until the Occupy Movement that I opened one, which explains why my personal landing page is www.facebook.com/sister.occupy.
My colleague Joe explained the role social media would play in the coming years. He told me that whatever I do, I must be ready to take my following along on my journey. His advice seemed Hollywood-esque, narcissistic even. I remembered his words later when I found the Sisterhood. Only then did his advice make sense. But I never had an inkling that the following I would build could be stolen. I never for a moment thought that was something a platform would allow.
Building the Sisterhood Online
As Sister Occupy, I blocked family members who didn’t get it, and I encouraged strangers to follow me. I built my personal page to 5,000 followers (the maximum) before it was time to open a Sisters of the Valley fan page. Back then, it was called a “fan page.” Now, it’s a “business asset.”
We built our sales to a million a year before the pandemic hit. The pandemic, followed by floods, mudslides, and barriers to selling our products in dispensaries, cut those sales by two-thirds. But over ten years, we grew our Facebook following to 167,000 people, who became our main source of buyers.
Joe’s advice worked. We built the business and survived economic hardships without advertising. We’ve never been allowed to advertise because people equate hemp with narcotics. Yet miraculously, in the second quarter of this year, Facebook invited us to advertise.
What it Means to Run a Small Business in America
It’s already challenging enough to be a small business in America, to be a small farm operator, to be a small manufacturer because you get none of the benefits that the big corporations have, and all three segments of industry have been shrinking relentlessly because of them. Now add the fact that you aren’t allowed to advertise, and you are seriously challenged.
This is how we have operated for nearly a decade – blocked from all advertising on all media platforms because their lawyers think hemp is a narcotic. Lawyers, in their over-protective need never to do any work, have also blocked us from having our products in dispensaries, but that’s another story.
As soon as we realized no one was going to let us advertise, we decided to create an advertising budget anyway and put the money into the craft yurt. That’s how Mettieville was born.
Metaphor Dolls – metaphors for throw-away women, because the vast majority came from flea markets, naked and forlorn, and were rescued by the Sisters and given purpose-driven lives.
All the Sisters over the years have contributed to Mettieville in some way. Through pottery, sewing, collecting, or building. The memes have become a favorite to our following and serve as a means for humorously sharing the culture.
Finally, in the second quarter of our ninth year, Facebook miraculously invited us to advertise and we were thrilled, not realizing the dependency we were building, not thinking for a moment that it could be taken away from us.
The Hack and the Loss
When the hack happened, it felt like a violation. We lost sales during those thirty days, and bills began to bounce. I wasn’t sure I’d ever been so insulted in my life. The loss of our page was like losing a part of our daily routine. It was as natural as brushing my teeth, and suddenly, it was gone.
It took daily calls with Facebook to first sort out that it was a hack. For that first week, I didn’t even know what had happened. A hacking ticket wasn’t opened until August 2nd, a week later. I spent the next month trying to get updates from Facebook, with little to no response.
The Recovery
Our first press release went out to the public on August 1st. Facebook opened a hacking case the next day. The second press release went out on August 28th, and two days later, our page was recovered. After thirty-four days in the hands of hackers, it didn’t look like our page anymore. The old URL was replaced with a string of numbers, ten years of reviews were gone, comments were deleted, and one thousand followers had vanished. If someone stole your car for thirty-four days, you wouldn’t expect to get it back in perfect condition, right? I guess we have to look at this the same way and count our blessings that the asset was returned.
New Questions
The questions that circled my head thirty days ago have changed. Now I’m curious as to which factor or factors influenced the resolution.
Was it our followers reporting the page?
Was it our relentless pestering of Facebook?
Was it Congressman Duarte’s office?
Was it Senator Padilla’s office?
Was it the FCC? The FTC? The FBI cyber-crimes unit?
Was it my daughter working with Facebook customer service through LinkedIn?
Or was it the press releases?
Another option, I suppose, is none of them and it just takes Meta/Facebook 34 days to investigate the return of a business asset, and that the process always takes that long.
I will likely never know, but as I turn my attention to rebuilding our page, recovering our URL, and regaining our lost reviews and followers, I think the answer to those questions will matter less and less.
Lessons Learned
- Don’t ever click on a stranger’s link.
- If you’re going to be an influencer, get some social media armor. (Where can I buy that?)
- Don’t put all your eggs in one vulnerable social media basket.
For thirty days, I tossed and turned at night, kept no schedule during the day, and devoted myself to trying to right this wrong. Finally, on day thirty, I accepted it. I moved on, went to the health club, took my vitamins, and ignored Facebook. Sister Camilla taught me how to use Instagram Threads, and I even began the annoying work of setting up a TikTok shop.
Is it possible that a lost facebook following is like a cat and you must ignore it for it to come to you? Or was it the lifting of mercury retrograde that brought in the resolution? We’d all like to know, but really, I think, we all just want to close this chapter and move on.
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