‘It was a real panic moment’

With more than 2 billion active members, Facebook has long been criticized for allowing bad actors to proliferate on its platform, from violent extremists to identity thieves. In May, the company announced that it disabled more than 3 billion “fake accounts” over a six-month period. (The platform records more accounts than it does active members.) “Our intent is simple: find and remove as many as we can while removing as few authentic accounts as possible,” wrote Alex Schultz, Facebook’s vice president for analytics, in an accompanying post.

It’s possible that users like Mr. Reeves and Ms. May were caught up in the sweep. But the number of people complaining about disabled Facebook accounts has been going up for years, according to data from the Federal Trade Commission, which tracked three such complaints in 2015, 12 in 2016, and more than 50 in each of the last two years.

Once Facebook disables an account, Mr. Schultz wrote, it keeps the person behind it from rejoining by deploying “advanced detection systems” that look for “patterns of using suspicious email addresses, suspicious actions, or other signals previously associated with other fake accounts we’ve removed.”

Travis Hinton, a dishwasher in New York who has used Facebook since 2012 to stay in touch with friends and to write posts about abandoned subway stations, found this out the hard way. After his account was disabled in July, he tried repeatedly to create new accounts using a series of new email addresses and found that the new accounts were disabled almost immediately.

Mr. Hinton, 34, found the company’s phone number and called it. “For customer support, press one,” said a voice recording. Hinton pressed 1. “Thank you for calling Facebook user operations,” he heard. “Unfortunately, we do not offer phone support at this time.” Then his line went dead. (This is still the message a caller receives.)

Mr. Hinton is incensed at being locked out of Facebook. He’s repeatedly tweeted obscenities at Facebook on Twitter and written angry, profane comments on Mark Zuckerberg’s Instagram posts. (Mr. Hinton didn’t lose his access to that social network, even though it is owned by Facebook.) He also tries to create new Facebook accounts — on different computers and phones, and at different locations — on a weekly basis, only to find them disabled within minutes.

Facebook’s decisions are opaque, and it can catch flak in situations that, in hindsight, take on a new clarity. In 2013, a videographer named Chris Leydon wrote for The Next Web about the trauma of having his Facebook account disabled without explanation. In 2017, the site added an editor’s note to the top of the post: “The guest author of this post was charged and found guilty of numerous offenses including sexual assault of a minor.” It is possible that Facebook’s decision to ban him was related; the site scans private messages for inappropriate interactions between adults and minors.