Prevent getting blocked

[marcelja]

@AlexKalopsia mentioned in #50 that many users have to set a very high limit rate to not get blocked. It would be good if we can collect some ideas here on what we could do to not need such a high limit rate.

I'm wondering if it makes a difference that we have parallel requests enabled: https://github.com/marcelja/facebook-delete/blob/0590b9e55503be047f76d0812622c260abe82599/deleter.go#L20 Setting this to 1 could help to not get blocked.

Another thing that we could do: Not using the default go user agent. I already tried that but didn't get it working (#33).

[AlexKalopsia]

Yeah, that's a good point, I will try and test with 1 routine and report back.

Using a different header also seems like a potentially good idea but haven't looked into it.

[aunefyren]

collect some ideas here on what we could do to not need such a high limit rate.

I'm curious if the block is on an account basis or some IP detection. Could one theoretically change their IP after being blocked? If so, is it then possible to have nodes on different IP's collaborating on deleting different content without hitting the traffic limit?

[AlexKalopsia]

Update: I run the command with 1 routine only and the default 100ms delay. Deleted elements from a full year (780 items) and Facebook temp blocked my account. It forced me to update my password and now I am back in control.

Update 2: After running this a second time (same parameters) Facebook blocked my activity feed, so now I have to wait for them to unblock it again.

[AKmatiAK]

maybe introduce some randomness in sending queries delay?

edit: also, fetch and delete behavior, so situations such as few hours fetching and ratelimited after only partial delete (or just during fetching activity) can be avoided, so always part of activity will be deleted before ban

[AKmatiAK]

ratelimit is progressive, so more you delete, more you have to extend deletion time. that's what I observed.

[AKmatiAK]

also, activity log on standard facebook seems to be out of mbasic ratelimit

[sibalmaryam]

i was quickly banned using default settings (100ms) with release 4.0 on ubuntu. i'll try 1500ms and see how that goes, tool seems to work but is being blocked

edit: logged back in and got ratelimited after using a delay of 15000ms. if anybody wants a quick way to bulk delete facebook activity, the iOS mobile app has a bulk delete option for most of the activity log for several dozen items at a time.

[AKmatiAK]

Interesting. When there is message "failed to delete" it actually deletes things even though ratelimit is imposed. Please someone confirm, as I observed this behaviorbut still I am not 100% sure.

[rajtslegr]

Interesting. When there is message "failed to delete" it actually deletes things even though ratelimit is imposed. Please someone confirm, as I observed this behaviorbut still I am not 100% sure.

Yeah I think you are right.

[Esentries]

I'm not sure if this helps guys but I noticed that when I manually delete stuff in the activity log, 250 posts is the limit. I downloaded an autoscroller to make the process faster and consistently deleted 250 posts at a time, it didn't seem to block me.

[autumnserenity]

@AlexKalopsia mentioned in #50 that many users have to set a very high limit rate to not get blocked. It would be good if we can collect some ideas here on what we could do to not need such a high limit rate.

I'm wondering if it makes a difference that we have parallel requests enabled:

https://github.com/marcelja/facebook-delete/blob/0590b9e55503be047f76d0812622c260abe82599/deleter.go#L20

Setting this to 1 could help to not get blocked. Another thing that we could do: Not using the default go user agent. I already tried that but didn't get it working (#33).

How can I modify the rate limit and how many posts it deletes? Also, would you happen to know if the block/ban is temporary?