18 Comments »We’ve been working on getting a comment from Facebook about today’s disabled Facebook pages. This afternoon we heard back and had a brief conversation with one of Facebook’s representatives. We found out a few interesting things. First of all, generic Facebook Pages are still permitted on Facebook but spamming through the feed is not. So how does Facebook determine what is legitimate and what isn’t?
Prior to giving a more in depth analysis, here’s what Facebook told us about the latest wave of Facebook Pages that had their stream disabled:
An important part of the Facebook experience is being able to connect with people, organizations and brands who are authentic. Some Pages, which sometimes spam users via the stream, are not an authentic user experience and are in violation of our Terms of Service. Recently we have begun enforcing our TOS by removing the ability for these Pages to publish into the stream.
Facebook wouldn’t comment on the process being used for determining which Pages to disable but the essentially emphasized that the largest pages will be addressed first. Another key factor for determining which Pages get disabled is the volume of messages being sent out by the Page administrator and the types of messages being created. While it’s impossible to automatically disable all generic Pages, Facebook is trying to ensure the best user experience possible.
Unofficial Pages Are Permitted
Want to make a Facebook Page about Coca-Cola? While you are going to have some trouble competing with the official Coca-Cola Facebook Page, you are more than welcome to go and create an unofficial Page. I tried using the example of the “This is 50″ community on Ning that was originally created by a fan and asked if that would be possible to create on Facebook. Brandon McCormick of Facebook couldn’t say right away whether or not it was legitimate but suggested the title was pushing the limit, suggesting that the page is in fact administrated by 50 Cent.
Essentially the best way to handle things is to err on the side of caution. You can most definitely create the “Unofficial 50 Cent Fan Page” and create a community of fans. It needs to be clear that the page is not official though. I’ll be elaborating further on the best strategies for leveraging Facebook Pages in the coming days (I’ve also posted an article with 10 strategies for Facebook Pages) but it’s important to know that unofficial pages are fine as long as they aren’t spamming.
If you create a page for “Beer” which will clearly attract millions of fans, Facebook doesn’t want you using that as a tool for promoting other Pages and for spamming users’ feeds. The bottom line is that Facebook wants to ensure the best user experience. Creating a Facebook Page about the beach then spamming their feeds won’t provide a great experience.
Thanks again Nick for informing us on the latest news to Facebook. Changes to Facebook are unpredictable so I advice my clients to create a social media strategy that has many channels incase one of the channels is cut off. This reminds me of SEO Black Hat/White Hat stuff…the Black hats push the limits hard and then changes have to be made.
That’s BS because I never sent ANY spam through the newsfeed…
Facebook simply targeted ALL generic pages with high activity and disabled status updates.
This is still an affront to companies that followed the rules and promoted our brands rather than the generic category of product. Users who promote generic Pages with “only” 100,000 fans are exempted and have full use of the feed? And now we have to compete with companies that broke the rules and have bigger followings? I guess next time Facebook promulgates rules we should be smart enough not to follow them since those who didn’t have been rewarded (unless they got very very big).
What is a “generic” page?
@brett - if you never spammed the Stream, then why would you care that you suddenly can’t now?
Why is it BS?
im sick of these people disabling without a reason
I know it stinks for a lotnog you but I’m just glad they are doing something. Unlike twitter where spam is 80% of what I see.
This has nothing to do with spam. Users opt in and are free to drop out of the group or even hide the streams. The fact that certain generic pages scaled so quickly is a testament to their popularity.
This is simply an issue of people making money from Facebook’s own inventory - and they don’t like that. Without a clear way to track the money being generated - and receive their fare share - FB has to shut down the generic pages. The reporters are being fed the SPAM argument, when in reality that is just a red herring.
Hey Guys’n'Gals
I’ve no idea about “generic” pages, I’m just a normal user who also likes to play some of the online games on Facebook
I went to sign on today, to find that I have been “disabled”.
I am unable to find out why, or what I have done to deserve this.
Anyone else out there had similar issues?
Cheers
Bob
Hey Guys’n'Gals
I’ve no idea about “generic” pages, I’m just a normal user who also likes to play some of the online games on Facebook
I went to sign on today, to find that I have been “disabled”.
I am unable to find out why, or what I have done to deserve this.
Anyone else out there had similar issues?
Cheers
Bob
@app-r-us..
I’m not mad because I can’t spam the stream.. I’m mad I can’t use the stream at ALL..
I can’t use it to interact with fans and grow the page… it’s a glorified group now and it blows.
My wife was playing mafia wars and I to her to deposit my money in the bank and she did. she accidentally click on one of my friends and backed out and logged into her’s.when she logged back into mine it said my log-in was disabled. I am disable and I do not know why. I don’t know how to get a facebook account. All I get is disabled account
I was wondering ….I reported a suspected scam just before I was disabled.
Message on my wall saying I had to pass it on to 15 friends or my account would be disabled.
Reported it and deleted it and whammo …I was disabled?
3 emails to Facebook so far and still no response
Facebook’s action seems somewhat heavy-handed. If they had a criteria to select certain generic sites, they should have at least had the courtesy to warn us on any infringement and then shut us down. Simply revoking publishing privileges without any evidence or notice is unjustified.
In the last two years I sent 2 or 3 updates to our fans. I do make daily posts relevant to our brand and our fans enjoyed these and responded by providing between 200 to 1500 comments per day. They even said they looked forward to these daily topics.
On our Facebook Page we clearly stated who we are, our brand and all our fans knew that ours was a commercial site. They did NOT complain to us about this. So we hid nothing on our page. So Facebook cannot say we were spammers or a generic page. Our users always had the choice to leave our FB page if they didn’t want to be part of us. In fact it grew daily and continues to grow by 10,000 fans per day.
As an administrator, I cannot even tell our fans that Facebook has prevented us from communicating with our fans.
Trying to contact Facebook is another story. I have sent 3 or 4 emails to Facebook, even tried to call them. Their phone number does not allow me to leave a message. I asked them for exact reasons and also for advise on what we should do to rectify anything wrong we may have done.
I even offered them some options to transfer our fans to another “non-generic” Page or least give me a chance to tell my fans what has happened. So far I have not received any replies or acknowledgement to my emails from Facebook on this subject.
So our Facebook Page is currently running like a freight train without a driver but it is picking up passengers along the way.
While Facebook encourages companies and commercial Pages to be hosted on Facebook, this sort of approach withour any warning is unfriendly.
Perhaps we as commercial enterprises need to have our presence in multiple social media sites or develop our own social media content on our websites.
I was just adding on friends from a mafia wars add on list and was diabled,I’ve sent at least ten e mails no answer,it’s been over two weeks now
I was disabled today and don’t do any of the things mentions–I don’t even know what a “generic page” is or how to spam etc. I simply used the site to stay in touch with friends and family. I’m mad because I was cut off with no warning, now family pics are gone and I’m cut off from family and friends who are all on facebook! I deserve an explanation and a chance to save my pictures!!! I feel like someone broke into my home and stole something.
I wrote the following to facebook… I guess I don’t need to explain further how I feel about this:
Dear Facebook,
With my hands shaking and my network crushed I will try to write you in the most rational way I can.. bear over with me if I fail.
I have attached the old e-mails… and yes perhaps making a second account after the first being deleted was wrong… but I still don’t understand why the first account was deleted in the first place, I have no clue of that and my school uses facebook for social events so it forced me to make a new… and after a year without troubles I asked whether I could get the deactived mails associated with the new account so I my study mates did not question me in that regard.
Instead facebook team decided to delete my account again… it is the second time I lose more than 600 contacts and all my photos, applications etc… I am not a suicidal person, but it could seem that this is what you people try to encourage.
I am a simple student, who uses facebook as a social tool in order to connect with friends around the world with similar interests… I never posted anything illegal or against copyrights or spammed anyone… if you believe I horassed someone it must be because you fail to understand the context where it was probably meant as a joke…
Maybe I could talk to somebody on the phone rather than having those standard written answers… I beg you to consider my situation and I have googled my case and it seems as if I am not the only one suddenly feeling crushed’
I don’t get the point in this regard and I still don’t understand what I have done wrong… perhaps you can tell me and then I can compensate for the trouble / pay to reactive my account…
I believe it is both parties interest and there is really no win for facebook to be so rigid, instead please try to understand my situation and help me - I mean a facebook without members wouldn’t be worth much, so if you delete each and everyone without any reason it doesn’t really support your business…
Perhaps I can ask my friends to vote for me on facebook, I am sure they would gladly do.. how many does it take… 50 people.. 100 people or more???
I hope and beg that there is somebody out there who is not just laughing, but actually concerned about my situation and interested in helping me… meanwhile all I can say is thanks for the trouble and I hope they will end’
Christopher Lilholm
Copenhagen, Denmark
+45 51 90 79 77
Stud. MSc. MIB / MSc. EMIT-LS
BSc. Business Administration and Service Management
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I am still waiting for their answer.. so cross your fingers for me… only this time I am more save as I have 480 people on my msn.. and the rest on my yahoo account… or in other networks… I would however still appreciate to continue with the convenient use of facebook… so fingers crossed!!!
Having read all of the above, and having at last received a response from Facebook (Disabled permanently, no appeals entered into!!) it seems that there is a “we can do what we want, so stuff the lot of you!” culture on the web site.
Similar attitude to North Korea, now I think of it!!??
Cheers & good luck to you all.
They win
I Give up!
Bob