This week Facebook arbitrarily removed my access to post anything for a month, because I wrote about my concerns about a young man who was acting in a way that alarmed me. Not going to mention his name, but he had previously posted photos of himself with other people’s kids, with comments that seems strange for a early 20’s something man to to make. As a single parent with a five year old, this concerned me. Other people had also written to me that his comments on my kid’s photos seemed creepy.
Additionally, I had learned that week that he had stayed at a Facebook friend’s house and was kicked out for doing drugs and exposing himself to her children.
I used Facebook as a tool to warm my Facebook friends and family about this person.
Facebook said that posting my concern was “bullying.” Yes, they felt me posting my concerns about a gentleman who was behaving strangely and had a history of drug use around children and exposing himself, was “bullying.”
Let that sit in: Facebook would rather protect the rights of a possible predator than the rights of a single parent to protect his child, and other children.
Let’s ignore that for a while and move onto the other issue: the arbitrary blocking and inability for me to work for my clients and my own businesses, based one low level Facebook employee’s perception and opinion.
My clients and I have paid millions of dollars to Facebook both in Facebook ads to their products, and in “likes” to their pages. This block prevents me personally from running these pages, running and posting any new content. If I didn’t have other people who are able to access and run those pages, it would mean, in theory for the period of 30 days, I would be unable to utilize the assets that I paid Facebook for.
This is obviously absurd and means that Facebook can block any of their advertising clients based on any low level employee’s perception about any post they see, perhaps even a satirical joke, a post in another language or even their own political view point. Facebook is then deleting all the value that was paid to them in “likes” and other advertising to drive users to my business pages.
By blocking me from running my business pages, they have basically defrauded me of all the advertising I have bought to drive Facebook users to those pages.
This is absurd, even more so that I was posting a warning about a potential predator.
