I switched phones without first transferring Google Authenticator and this year have been locked out of my Facebook account on everything except Meta's iOS apps.

This twitter user essentially documented the exact flow of my issue:
Ben Ratner on Twitter: "I believe that Facebook has an issue with their 2FA/Code Generator/Text Message system for logging in to their platform - as well as support for it. I've seen this issue a few times on other devices - and I'm experiencing it now as I prepare to upgrade to a new iPhone." / Twitter

I have tried all of the solutions on Facebook's 'help' pages to no avail and am now having to think outside the box. I have been unable to interact with any human support from Facebook other than their VR team.

Ideas:

• Buy a Meta Quest to receive support from the Facebook VR team.

  • sounds ridiculous but the only human I was able to hear from was from this support team, but other than sending me unhelpful links, they said they weren't able to help more unless I was a Quest customer.

• WhatsApp Business support

  • I have a WhatsApp business number (which I cannot manage due to this issue), but have been unable to find the channels to receive support from this side of things.

• I am very skeptical that any help page link will be able to assist me, unless it is new. I have clicked through all 'support' pages for this, and they either:

  • don't apply

  • requrie being logged in on web

  • take me to a black hole of a form that I never receive an answer from

• This feels like something that will requrie sending in an ID or some back-and-forth with a human.

  
  
  

I will award bounties in estimated proportion to how much they played a part in me getting access back.

If you think your tip will help, you can bet on whether or not it will work out at all here:

Big update! I was able to pay for Meta verification and it appears there is a live support option.

Update: For the first time ever, I was able to talk to a real human from Meta without having to pretend I wanted to buy one of their vitual reality devices. They collected my info and told me they would pass it on to a dedicated team, but I have not gotten an email


8/28/23: There seem to be two tiers of support. Inbound frontline support and then technical support to whom they escalate. I have been allegedly escalated to that second level of support, but have not heard from them at all and the front line support keeps trying to get me to close the ticket with assurances that I'll hear from the tech folks soon...