I am sure it comes as no surprise to you that Facebook is one of the biggest and most complicated companies on planet earth. Now, given that this company centers everything it does around technology, one would be inclined to think that when it comes to their in house systems, they have things pretty much nailed down.
Well, in this short post, we are going to let you know, especially if you run a Facebook business page, you have to be incredibly careful, as there is a huge flaw in the Facebook advertisement review system.. and if you are not careful, you may end up accused of terrorism and peddling propaganda, after all, that’s what happened to us.
In order to keep things short, I have attached the video above. If you follow us on Facebook, you have probably seen this video flying around and you know, as do most that it’s a stupid comedy take on anonymous.
When we uploaded this video to Facebook, as expected the video was rejected before manual review. Once manually reviewed, this video was, of course, deemed appropriate and in no way a violation of the Facebook policy.
But.. what may surprise you is this, Facebook doesn’t keep any notes from manual reviews. In fact, their system makes a note only of your rejections and places you on a strike system.
So, as you can imagine, by the third time of uploading this video, I found my account was banned and then I had to appeal the ban, this is where the fun started.
Enter the Facebook ban police…
Firstly, I should say, if you ever need to talk to anybody at Facebook, good luck finding somebody.
When I finally managed to get through to a sort of human, I was not expecting the lashing I got. I was told the content was disgraceful, illegal content, promoting terrorism, and propaganda. I will be honest, at this point, I asked if I was speaking directly with Mr. Trump himself.
After about 4 hours of me asking if they had actually reviewed the video or read the previous reports from the manual reviews. I was told
“do not argue with our decision, it is final” and “your ban in irreversible”
Now, while this post may read as a bashing of Facebook, it really isn’t. I eventually managed to get the account reviewed by somebody with far fewer issues and the account was reinstated (and an apology given).
What this post is truly about is how careful you have to be with Facebook. In itself, as a tool for your business, it can be one of the best things at your fingertips. The trouble seems to come when you’re a layman and want to approach something from a different angle.
The truth is, while Facebook can make your business if you get hold of the wrong person on the wrong day, they could also break it in a second. So, whatever you do with your Facebook ad account, don’t pretend to be in Anonymous for fun…you will just end up in virtual Guantanamo Bay.