If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stomping on a human face – forever.” – George Orwell, imagining life in the year 2016.

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A couple of months ago, I checked my e-mail in the morning, and I was shocked to find a message from Facebook telling me that I owed $749.46 for an ad supposedly boosting the number of likes on my page. Would I please give them a credit card number to charge?

Two or three times over the past few years, I have paid $50 or $60 to boost posts that were important to me – carriage horse stories or crowdsourcing pleas for people. But I have never paid to boost the likes on my page, or even had any idea how to do it. I would never authorize a $749.46, first because I don’t have $749 to spend and secondly, I can’t imagine doing it. I don’t need to buy my likes, I’ve earned them and worked  hard for every one.

This was the second time this had happened, several months earlier, I got a similar bill, but for a smaller amount. Somehow it was possible to activate some Facebook ads without knowing it or realizing it.  There was all kind of testimony online about it. There had been no prompts, nothing to click, no status reports or notifications, I had no idea ads were running day and night for weeks without my ever knowing it. I found an e-mail address online for people with ad questions, and after a dozen or so exchanges over weeks with someone who said her name was Morgan, I got an e-mail saying my complaint had been referred to superiors and I might expect a response in six weeks or so.

Sometime later, I got another e-mail, this one saying I had been given a partial refund, the bill was about $500. I hadn’t, of course, authorized that one either, we had just come out of bankruptcy and I wasn’t even ordering much food at the market. I paid most of it, I was intimidated at the idea of dealing with this faceless universe. Facebook would never explain why this happened, or why I would have to pay anything for a mistake that was theirs, not mine.

I admit I got scared, II balked at the idea of challenging this vast entity, it was the age-old story of the single human up against  vast machine that kept assuring me they cared, but did not. I told Maria it must have been my fault, I must have screwed up in some way, but I couldn’t imagine  how, it had never happened before.  Apple is a big company, and so is Amazon, but if you have a problem you can call them and they will help you.

You cannot call Facebook and no one wants to help you.

The idea of even trying to contact so giant and impersonal a company as Facebook left me stymied. They are famous as a new kind of company, mostly a software company, not a people company. They are one of the most successful companies in the world. I imagine they can afford a customer service department.

They have billions of customers, and there is really no way to contact them, no human sitting by a phone on the other end of the line. The company built on connection does not permit any.

I will admit that Facebook is important to me, that might explain my reluctance to challenge them.  I have 42,000 hard-won likes on Facebook and my page is an important part of my writing life, one of the most important ways to talk about my blog and my books to my readers.

This was, to me, a kind of Orwellian drama from the first, a fascinating encounter with this literally de-humaniing corporation that was built around the idea of software replacing people while bringing them together. I knew I was in trouble. I was frightened and fascinated, both at the same time. I suppose I knew this day would come, and had always been afraid of it.

The next couple of months have, in fact,  been an Orwellian nightmare. I exchanged a score of e-mails with Evan, from something called the Facebook Ads Support Team (clearly an outsourced team with no information or authority to dispense). He was always cheerful and courteous, but he was a kind of stone wall. H his hands were always tied, he might have been a software code himself, I wouldn’t really know.

it seemed he could not make any decisions, only pass along rules that could never be changed. One  refund, period. No appeal. He had no phone number, he did not call. If he was a real person, it must be an awful job, saying not to people in distress all day.

Because I had been given a refund for the first incident, there would be no possible refund for the second incident. It didn’t matter, said Evan, what had happened or who was responsible. And there would be no one to talk to. And no place to appeal or complain. And no one who was trying to understand. He was done with me, I could pay, period. I suppose if I had the money, I might have given in. Facebook was vast and rich. Could I possibly tangle with them and win?

But something else was stirring inside of me, and that was a sense of moral right. This was just wrong.

I confess to a slight panic and almost caved last  week and asked Evan if I could pay this debt – I really hate debts hanging over me, and I do not have the patience for prolonged conflicts with giant corporations – if small payments were possible. I imagine this is where many ad victims end up.

Evan assured me in a message (it usually took a couple of days for him to reply)  that he was helpless. People were never given second refunds, no matter whose fault it was. I was thinking I ought to come up with the money somehow, you can’t place any additional ads on Facebook if you owe money for previous ones. I started wondering how I could do it. My debt kept popping up on my Facebook page, not-so-subtle reminders.

Clearly, no one at Facebook was going to speak with me. No one would ever speak to me. No one cared what had happened to me, or would ever investigate whatever issue was causing these ads to self-activate and run silently for weeks. Several friends told me that they had similar experiences on Facebook. They had all paid up.  I kept thinking there had to be a way out, a compromise.  I am not a deadbeat, I pay my bills, I do not authorize $749 ads. I felt anger, confusion, fear. Shouldn’t this bother a company on some level in some way?

I couldn’t stop thinking it is wrong to take people’s money – I have given Facebook a good deal of money – and not even be available to talk to them or help them if they are in trouble or have a problem. Is this really the future? I respect the future and wish to be a part of it, but this idea of the future is very wrong to me. Was Orwell right? Was the future a boot stomping on my well being, taking my money at will? I don’t really  believe that.

I was getting nervous around my Facebook page. The ad could start itself again, and I would never know it, and find myself with another huge bill that wasn’t right and that I couldn’t pay. It was Orwellian, it was something of a nightmare.

I got angry over this, I went for a walk in the woods, my Canopy of Peace,  with the dogs. I have never, not once in my life, filed any kind of consumer complaint with the government against any company. I hate to bother Customer Service. But this was wrong, I thought, even though the very idea of challenging Facebook – I felt like Hans Solo flying into the Death Star – was daunting. And yet, also exhilarating. Stand in my truth, I say it all the time.

A vast company with billions of customers and no human being to talk to or ask for help.

I felt I had to do it, not only for me, but for the many other people less entitled than me who get bills popping up that they have to pay because Facebook is too lazy or greedy to find out what’s wrong. No refund because I had received a previous one? Really? Because I have been mistreated twice, I had to pay a fine?

Why was I being asked to pay for their obvious mistakes? Why didn’t two refund requests mean they had messed up, not me?

So I pondered about the moral responsibility of the single disconnected consumer – a writer on his farm.  I write a lot about standing in my truth, and if I caved to Facebook I would not like myself in the morning. And that is my rule. When I make decisions, I ask myself if I would like me in the morning.
And besides, I do not have $749 in the bank to give to Facebook. Once upon a time I would have paid the bill in a heartbeat, just to get the issue past me. I bet they count on it.

Mark Zuckerberg makes a lot of noise about social justice and corporate responsibility, let’s see if the new kind of  company has any.

So I came home and went on the site of the Federal Trade Commission.  They have a consumer complaint division. Government might help, I thought, the only entity I know that might be barely as big as Facebook and able and willing to help me. Their website said they would.  I dread bureaucracies, they make me shiver. I went on the FTC website and there at the top of the page was a button to click to file a complaint about social media corporations.

I filled out the form, described what had happened, and asked the FTC for  help. It was not an angry letter, not a rant, and it only took me ten minutes to fill out. I have no idea what will happen now, but I took the leap. I am challenging Facebook, I won’t pay that bill.

I expect to like me in the morning.

I am on very unfamiliar turf.  I’m at the crossroads of the present and the future, as we all are. I will figure it all out.

I am now in the middle of two vast entities,  Facebook and the U.S. Government, both notorious for being impossible to reach or communicate with. I am in sympathy with the truly powerless and helpless and how they feel. What, I kept wondering, if this had happened to one of my neighbors, she is 86 and deaf and goes on Facebook to connect with her grandchildren, who helped her set up her Facebook page? She would have been horrified, frightened.

Will my federal government help me? Is Facebook even reachable by them? I’m sure there is a number and the CEO’s and bankers and police almost surely have it. Simple customers would not have it, not even if they get $749 bills they didn’t authorize.

Before I went to the FTC site, I went to Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook page. I  had this movie kind of fantasy about messaging him and telling him my story. Maybe he would read it, and send a scorching message or text to the head of the Facebook Ads Support unit, if there is actually such a thing. It is something Jeff Bezos on Amazon is said to do every now and then, Steve Jobs loved to do it at Apple, he loved to read his e-mail.

I found Mark Zuckerberg’s page.

There were lots of photos of Mark in his green T-shirt smiling. One said he was now the fifth richest person in the world (no wonder, I thought). Another said it was “Friends Day” at Facebook, he was sitting with a bunch of FB friends he had known for 10 years. He looked happy. He loves his green T-shirt,  I think, it shows off his muscles and projects a very non-corporate look for the fifth richest person in the world.

There was no way to message Mark Zuckerberg, no button, no way to share with him. I thought of George Orwell and his vision of the future, all of us loners, us little people at the mercy of huge forces without mercy or compassion whom we had to obey?

Was I drifting into paranoid fantasy or just seeing the world clearly? I don’t know, I’ll share what happens. I will tell you one thing that makes me feel good and stronger and better. I will not pay that bill. They can take my page and my likes and stuff both of them, but they will not take my dignity and pride.  I will not agree to being that small or insignificant. Some one will have to pay attention to me.

That’s how I will deal with this vision of the future.

And pride is important. It was the one thing Orwell always said they could never take from you, not even in the future.