Facebook setting limits on how much you can share?
I’ve always thought Zuckerberg and company were all about the notion that more information sharing translates to a better society. But my saga with the social networking giant during the past 48 hours has made me question whether Facebook really is convicted is to the ideology of open dialogue.
Let me explain to you my situation: I’m an online editor/social media coordinator for a traditionally small student-run newspaper here at Mercer University in Macon, Ga. We just revamped our web strategy a little more than a month ago, and we’ve obviously been using Twitter and Facebook integration as a way to market our online content. Social networking outreach just makes sense, and it’s a good way to have our journalism reach a wider audience than it would normally in our print edition.
As part of my job, I’ve been relying heavily on Facebook and Twitter to share breaking news stories on our website, mostly using The Cluster‘s Facebook page to post links to new stories for fans who have ‘liked’ the page. Yesterday morning, however, I was shocked to find that Facebook had locked me out of almost all of my account features, including posting personal status updates, making wall posts and sending personal messages.
Whenever I try to share anything on Facebook –– even the simplest status update with no links, or a message to a friend –– I receive the following message, which I’ve posted a screenshot of below:
No big deal, right? Well, not for most people, perhaps, but I depend upon Facebook every day to do my job and conduct my everyday life, and I’ve been locked out of the system for almost 48 hours now. I can’t reply to messages sent to me by my professors and co-workers. I can’t contact potential story sources using Facebook messages. And most of all, I can’t administrate the Facebook page for our newspaper and do my job. I’ve been essentially thrown out of the social community for no explainable reason.
Obviously, I’ve sent multiple support messages to Faebook during the past two days politely asking them to reinstate my account, since I’ve done nothing spammy or abusive (no mass messages or invites, no mass link posting, no account hijacking––basically nothing sketchy). So far, I’ve yet to receive a response back from Facebook. I’ve even tried calling their customer support line at (650) 543-4800 to resolve the issue with a real person, which only gave me a default automated response saying, “Telephone customer support is currently unavailable for Facebook users. Please submit a support request online and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”
The real issue at hand
After going nuts for the past 48 hours at being locked out of my account, I did some research on Facebook’s support center on potential reasons for why my account may have blocked. That’s when I was startled to find the following disclaimer on the company’s policy on disabling account features:
Blocked: You are unable to use a specific feature, but you can still access your account.
Facebook has policies to stop behavior that other users may find annoying or abusive. A block is set when Facebook systems determine that the user was adding friends or using a feature repeatedly in a short period of time after being warned to slow down. If your account is blocked, you will still be able to log on to Facebook, but you will not able to add friends or use a feature temporarily.
I have been blocked from using a feature.
Facebook has policies to stop behavior that other users may find annoying or abusive. Even if you did not have this intention, Facebook systems have determined that you were repeatedly using the same feature in a short period of time.
Since you did not adhere to previous warnings, a temporary block was set on your account. Here’s what you should keep in mind about your block:
This temporary block will last anywhere from a few hours to a few days.
Attempting to use this feature while you are blocked can extend the block.
We cannot lift this block for any reason, so please be patient and refrain from using this feature for a few days while waiting for this block to be removed.
Once you are allowed to use this feature again, you must significantly slow down or stop this behavior. Further misuse of site features may result in more blocks or your account being permanently disabled.
Unfortunately, Facebook cannot provide any specifics on the rate limits that are enforced. The threshold at which you are warned is not a specific number, but rather determined by different factors, such as speed, time, and quantity.
The policy is fair enough, but I haven’t received a single warning that I’ve been abusing Facebook’s features, and I would challenge Facebook to prove otherwise. To say that I haven’t “adhered to previous warmings” is a flat out lie. They haven’t said a word to me about spam activity, and I haven’t done anything abusive in the first place. For that matter, I haven’t friended any more than five people in the last month.
The policy says I should “refrain” from using Facebook for a few days to wait for my account features to be reinstated. Unfortunately that’s just not really possible given my reliance upon the site for work. Are they saying there’s a limit on how much I can share, or am I completely overreacting?
Meanwhile, I’ve been Tweeting my complaints to @Facebook with the #facebook hashtag. Hopefully, someone will get back with me soon before I go crazy for not being able to use my account. I feel like I’ve been temporarily jailed for an offense I didn’t commit without even being given due process.
UPDATE 3/12, 10:55 p.m. EST: Now I’ve completely lost power to click any eternal links from Facebook, even those posted by other friends on my news feed. When I do click any eternal links, I get the following message, which is obviously an error because not every link could have possibly been marked as abusive, and my other FB friends can access them with no problem:
So, really, what gives? This is seriously screwing up my day-to-day routine.
Carl V. Lewis is the online editor for MercerCluster.com. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter at twitter.com/carlvlewis. Click here to see his bio.
I totally feel you––Facebook really should improve their logistics before taking away account privileges like this. It’s too important of a tool to take away from people without due process.
This has just happened to me. I googled the problem and ended up here.
I received no ‘warning message’. All I was doing was mesaging some friends for a friendly hello and adding the link to my company page in the message aswell.
That is not spammy, or offensive, or if it was to one of my friends who reporrted me, well, they can go to hell.
As long as my page does not get taken down or deleted, I won’t kick up too much of a shit fit.
on similar matters FB has told me to become admin on pages I post to or share with. have been only partly successful.
Facebook policy suggests that they block users for promoting anything having to do with business in order to attempt to force users into paying for facebook promotions. You can’t supply too many links or send a series of similar messages because both these acts suggest a user is attempting to promote their companys/businesses. Why you say? Because you did not pay them to use their facebook promotion and how dare you try to increase your bottom line without increasing facebook’s bottom line! Facebook is not intended for businesses. They made business pages in an attempt to drive income to facebook by getting revenues from businesses to advertise with facebook. Facebook is not concerned about free interaction at all.
The bottom line is Facebook’s bottom line.
FB is doing the same to me & has already banned from friending or messaging twice for month at a time. Sending them a message is a waste of time. The ignorant shits just ignore us. Their policies suck. FB won’t last long if it does not become responsive.
I say one thing, move to Google+ much better community of people and tell your friends to do the same!
I am doing nothing business like. I was sharing cute cat photos when I got the same message. I don’t know if I am blocked yet or not as I said screw it, posted what I got and left.
Don’t think facebook really cares what they do….Mark has made his money now…..same thing happened to lots of people on here have researched it….and also to a friend of mine….it blocks him from talking to me and we do not use spam or anything like that
Also may I add if this continues the same thing will happen to facebook that happened to the other network sites….shame on you facebook….people will move to the next new network site launched and it wont be long before that happens
Hello group
I came upon this discussion group as it seems most relevant.
I got a
fifteen day block without warning.
I use facebook to make the intellectual case
for economic and environmental justice.
Here is
what I did to get blocked.
I selected
an article with a link and sent it out to like minded pages in sucession.
I put 12
group pages into an access data base and then sent the article with a lint to each
one after the other. When I got to number 8 I got the block.
My material
is not commercial it is political and I think the groups that I recently sent
it to should have not minded getting it.
Any tips on
managing this issue would be healpfull
Facebook even limits the amount of likes and other emoji one may use, as well as ability to share other’s posts to your own page.
How ridiculous is that!
I like to share cute videos and funny memes, they cut me off saying I’ve done too much. last night I tried to share one about missing children in the area where I live and they blocked me from doing that too. I have sent them several messages without a response it has been 48 hours and I am still not allowed to share, I have received no messages from them regarding anything
How many posts/shares did you make in 24 hour after you got blocked?
Yup same thing happened to me.
I was posting and sharing in only two groups.
I am an admin in both of them.
I was blocked
I dont see why we are limited to how many things we can share in message. Most people have alot of close friends they want to share something’s with. This is not right. You just seem to be blocking things negative about Biden. That is our opinion and seems like you are taking sides.
basically they want you to pay if you want to actually promote something. Facebook is an asshole. There no such thing as a regular person goes viral. If you go viral, there is a reason, it has to have some kind of platform that promoted you and they obviously get something out of your content by doing so. Or you pay money then you will have your own platform
Facebook drives me crazy. They block my account sometimes on my first shared post., It if I tag more than one person. It’s rediculious. Right now I can not tag more than one person per comment box. I tag a second person it will delete the first tag. They jail people for sharing only two post a day. If they don’t want us to interact y each other then why the share and tag option to start with!?! I wish there was another site to use to keep in touch with family better because I’d ditch facebook. Sick of being jailed for no reason. If they are not getting complaint over a list then what’s their problem. They should back off especially during this it when they know we can’t visit in person. Live this post . Your soooo right!!!
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Me : Posting pics of animals. Me fixing to ax my account .