Discover how losing a profile can mean losing a few thousand business clients
A few days ago, I wrote an article that was republished a number of times around the internet. In it I detailed a little bit of the angst being felt by people who had been banned or suspended while diddling around in the social network - Facebook.
Some might say - so what? Big deal, you got banned or suspended. But if you are the one in the soup and your boss is wondering what happened to the 300 friends you were going to invite to his party, or your loved one is wondering if you are hiding from him/her then the deal gets a little more serious.
If you are one of those several tens of millions of users who have *lost* a facebook friend or relative, you know what I mean. And if you are one of those unfortunates who have been banned or have an ongoing suspension that appears to be lasting forever, then the topic is near and dear to your heart.
Mom & Pop facebook marketing operations frequently lose their profiles when they are caught outright. Facebook has an engine in the background that watches for what is considered abnormal behavior. It has been tracking and analyzing normal user behavior inside Facebook for quite some time now, so figuring out activity that is not the norm and running that past its comparison engine that has 100 Million samples to compare with must be a thing of real beauty.
In that article, I wrote a little about the facebook warning messages which I and many others consider quite bland. I detailed in vivid language that I personally felt that for such an important thing, they facebook could have done a little better in terms of bringing the urgency of the situation to their members.
Ignorance of the Law is no excuse and in the case of Facebook, a faceless engine in the background deems certain activity looks like spam according to their filters and suddenly you are out of there. But here is some detail on activities that you should NOT do, so as to stay out of trouble with Facebook.
Blatant Nudity - for you exhibitionists this is a no no Writing to too many people who are not your friends ( yet ) Writing too much to people who have invited you to be their friend but whom you have not yet accepted. Writing on too many walls in a short period of time - looks like spam
Using images without permission - you are asked about this. Using facebook’s email facility as if it were IM or MSN or Yahoo chat. Odd that on a social network you can get banned for that, but there you go. Facebook has a chat facility and they would rather you use that rather than abuse the email in that way. Promotion of racism, hate mail or any of the regular sort of utterances that would have gotten you in trouble outside of facebook too. People engaging in this thing shouldn’t be surprised if their accounts are permanently suspended.
If you are a group admin, spamming your own group more than three times in a day. If you have just been warned about something. Do it twice more within an hour or so. Sending Add requests to more than 250 people you don’t know within a 24-48 hour span of time.
Generally, it would appear that there are two classes of evil that can get one banned or suspended from facebook. Nudity and stealing images and other such types of activity is one class of activity.
a time based limit that has been exceeded such as inviting two hundred strangers to be your friend in a week which is allowed, but not if done in 30 minutes.
If however you are reading this after having gotten suspended or banned, there is a resolution email on the site that you can attempt to plead your case to.
