Basic Facebook Guide: fb disable options

What I Learned When Facebook Disabled My Account

To say that Facebook plays a big part in my life is a bit of an understatement – as I’m sure it is for any other social media manager. Not only do I use it to keep in touch with friends and family – but I’m forever adding content to one of the many pages I admin, whether for myself or for clients.
Imagine my surprise when I tried to sign into Facebook one morning only to receive the following message:

My account was disabled? What does that even mean?
I tried to log in with another browser and I got the same message. Facebook disabled my account!
Facebook supplied a form submission page for those wishing to write to Facebook about their disabled account, and I emailed them basically asking why my account was disabled and how I can get access back to the numerous pages I’m an admin for. I explained that I manage a variety of pages for clients, and was always mindful about the content I posted – after all, my parents are on Facebook too.
After sending the email to Facebook, I sent an email to the friends who’s email addresses I actually had and explained what happened. Thanks to the connect-ability of Facebook, most of my friends were only able to be contacted by me on Facebook.

The replies I received from that email were classified into three different categories:
WTF/WTH – why would they do that??
Is it because you posted political stuff (I like Ron Paul and shared content about #OWS)
Maybe somebody flagged you..

I read up on some of the articles by others who have had their accounts disabled to find out why mine was suddenly pulled – without warning I should add. The publishing dates on the articles span the lifetime of Facebook, showing that the company has forever been on a behind-the-scenes campaign of disabling accounts at their discretion.

I found some articles by famous bloggers or journalists, including Roger Ebert, Robert Scoble, and Stan Shroeder (Mashable). Many of these high-profiled Facebook users had their profiles and/or pages reabled soon after Facebook discovered who they disabled. For the rest of us, we’re basically on our own.

Reading these articles didn’t instill much hope in me or my situation. The realization of what I lost was starting to set in too.

Related Posts:

Over the years I had computers crash, stolen, lost, etc. and relied on Facebook to host all my travel and party photos. The website isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, so why not upload all my photos on Facebook for my friends and family to view at their discretion? There were well over 2000 photos, countless videos, blog posts (notes), plus all the contacts (I still haven’t been able to reconnect with many who were all lost when Facebook disabled my account). This was looking to be a very bleak situation as I further realized just what was lost.

I had to regain access to Facebook to manage the pages for my clients, and also for my own enterprises. Many of my pages’ admin access were shared with a partner and were easily set back up with the new Facebook account I begrudgingly created, cursing Facebook under my breath as I set up the new account.

Some of the Facebook pages admin access were shared with my clients, whom I had to contact to have them re-add me with my new account. All of them asked “Why did your account get disabled?” and rightfully so. I, too, would question the person I paid to manage my Facebook page why their Facebook account was disabled. Wouldn’t you?

I still don’t have an answer to that question. “I have no idea” is the answer I still give, because its true. Facebook has still yet to give me a reason why my account was disabled. After reading the reasons Facebook disabled accounts on their page I was still in the dark. I didn’t spam-add people, post sexual content, harass anyone.. so why they deleted me didn’t make sense. Only after I read other articles did I understand a bit more.

Facebook can disable your account if your display name is different than that on your birth certificate. Mine was, but not by much. It was still phonetically the same, but spelled different than the rest of my family. I also had a client who recently used a contest promotion to increase their email list. According to Facebook promotional guidelines, contests can only be run on Facebook through one of two apps: ShortStack and WildFire. Could that be why my account was disabled? I checked that client’s Facebook page and it was gone too. Aha!

Although the contest wasn’t exactly hosted on Facebook (it was hosted on the client’s website), and the winner was notified via email (you cannot announce winners on your wall), I was confident this was the offending action which had me ushered off Facebook without so much as a ‘Bye-bye’.

At this point it was about a week since I initially wrote Facebook that fateful morning, and I still hadn’t received a reply. I revisited the page allowing me to contact Facebook, and explained that I now had a better idea about why they disabled me, and that I was sorry. I vowed never to do something like that again (was it really that bad??) if they just reable my account.

I sent that off and waited again. After a few more days I realized something .. something very important – I created a filter in gmail for Facebook emails. Even if they did email me, I would have never received the email because it was set to “Skip Inbox/Delete”. Harsh.

So I sent another email to Facebook, this time letting them know that I had a filter on my gmail and if they did contact me prior to this email, I would have never received it.

A few days later I finally received an email from Javier at Facebook. Here’s the only response I’ll likely get from Facebook:

What a juvenile response – sure Facebook is a ‘young’ company, but I’m sure there must be someone there with better tact than ‘we’re not going to reable your account – don’t email us again.’ OK Facebook.

So what did I learn from my experience with Facebook?
Back up your account! You never know if/when they’ll decide to delete you.
Don’t manage your various client’s pages with the same account. If one page/account gets deleted, you won’t lose them all.
A lot of my friends are snobs who’s profiles are either hidden from search, or they disabled the “Add as a friend” button making it impossible to re-add them.
Its been about a month since I had my account disabled, and had lots of time to reflect on the experience. I haven’t tried to contact Facebook directly since I received the email from Javier, but I did start the website www.facebook-disabled-my-account.org, and the hashtag campaign on Twitter #FBdisabledMe to draw attention to the negative experience.

Do I want Facebook to change their disabling policy? Nope.

I manage a few MU sites and if you want someone off your site, by all means delete them/block them/whatever. But for Facebook to disable the account and to keep the data/photos/videos/connections/blog posts, that is wrong. What would Facebook be if nobody uploaded content onto the site – No photos to share or tag – No articles to Like – No status updates to LOL at – It would be NOTHING.

Facebook should allow those who they disabled to download their account, letting them retrieve their photos/videos/notes/etc., before going off to the barren wastelands of Google+, or to RT their friends status updates (as opposed to ‘Liking’ it). Facebook already makes it possible for an active account to be downloaded, so why not a disabled account?

It’s time for Facebook to get a bit more mature in this area – especially with their IPO announced. I’m actually considering buying stock just so they will have to listen to my complaint – at the very least I’ll profit from them.

Have you had your Facebook account disabled? Did you get it back, and if so how?

Did you know that you can get remote access to your private online workspace with access to all windows applications, Try out trending virtual PCs by CloudDesktopOnline.com with top-notch support from one of the best DaaS providers – Apps4Rent.

What to Do If Your Facebook Ad Account Is Disabled

what to do if your facebook account is disabled

When things go wrong with your Facebook ads, it typically falls into two categories: disapproved ads or disabled account. If you’ve received an ad disapproval, it’s likely due to a violation, whereas a disabled account is due to repeated ad violations or highly negative feedback on your account.

Disapproved ads

There’s a difference between an ad that gets disapproved immediately versus one that is flagged after running for a period of time. Common causes of ad disapproval are:
Use of flagged words, such as “this” because that word is often used as click bait. Excessive use of “you” or “your” may also cause disapproval.
Incessant amounts of markings, characters or using all capital letters.
An issue with your landing page. Redirects to another type of page, obtrusive pop-ups or income claims will get flagged.
Violating the personal attributes section of the ad policy.
Using Facebook’s trademark, logo, images or even just not capitalizing the word “Facebook.”

If your ads are disapproved after running for a period of time, it could be due to:
Frequency, or how long the ad has been running. If people see the same ad too often, they might report or hide it, which could encourage Facebook to shut it down.
Negative user feedback plus reporting makes Facebook look more closely at an ad, so don’t just set the ad and forget about it.
A Facebook ads rep is assigned to review your account and finds your ads in violation of a policy that “slipped through the cracks" when you first set it up.
Any changes or updates to Facebook's software can also trigger a sweep of disapproved ads, and in this case, it might be a mistake.

Related: 10 Laws of Social Media Marketing

Dig around and try a few things to remove the flag that caused the disapproval. Try the same ad from a different Facebook ad account and the same page, or a different ad with the same Facebook ad account and a different page. The reasoning behind this is to isolate the offending variable. It’s important to know if it’s the ad account, the Facebook business page hosting the ad, or the ad itself. If nothing seems to work, get in contact with a person at Facebook:
At 9 a.m. EST on business days, go to Facebook Business Resources.
Under the “Top Questions” heading you’ll see either the chat or email icon (available only during business hours).
Chat with a support technician to see what the problem is. Be gracious to this person and show them that you’re willing (and trying) to comply with the rules.
There is also an option to appeal via email, but I’ve always found the chat to be more efficient.

Be persistent. If you’ve tried to fix the ad and it is still being flagged, or if you have chatted with a support technician and didn’t like the answer, continue appealing. This process could take several days or even a couple of weeks, but keep trying.

If this was your first time running a Facebook ad, once you’ve cleared the flags, I suggest running a few easy Facebook ads, such as “Like” and awareness ads, or boosting a Facebook Live video, just to get them approved and to familiarize yourself with the process. Typically, ads that don’t require the user to leave Facebook are approved more easily than those that send the user off Facebook. After the ads run for a few hours, you can turn them off. This is a way to “reset” the ad account so approvals start happening automatically.
Disabled accounts

If your personal ad account is disabled, it can be dramatic both professionally and personally. The first and best option is to use the chat appeal process I mentioned above. And don’t forget to keep trying, even if you get a no the first time. I had one student who had to try five times over the course of three weeks to get her account re-instated.

If none of that works, set up a new ad account using the following process:
Finding a trusted friend, colleague or family member.
Go to the person's house (so you’re on a different IP address).
Have the person open up a brand new business manager account.
Set up a new ad account in the business manager.
Set up a new Facebook business page.
Get a new type of payment, such as a new credit or debit card.
Have them make you an admin on the new page and account so you have full administrative privileges.
You might even need to run ads to landing pages that are on a different domain than you were previously.

Blog Archive