How I got Banned from Facebook
When I was booted, I received no email, no msg, no confirmation. Just a generic link to the Facebook Terms of Service. For 3 weeks, I received no responses to any of the Facebook email addresses for disabled accounts. And then 3 weeks later, I get 1 email (see below), and my account is turned back on.
Since Facebook is a we-learned-from-myspace’s-mistakes kind of site, they are super, super, super paranoid about Spam. So they have a few strict published rules like:
No non-person profiles (you have to make a “fan page”). No porn.
And then, they have serveral internal rules, which will cause you a lot of frustration if you don’t know about them.
Those internal rules are:
No repeat messaging. No over-inviting. No scraping (copy/pasting emails from facebook).
Overall, I agree with these policies. Here’s the problem: They can’t manage 6 billion people’s behavior. No freaking way. So they have all these little internal Facebook Robots that are set to attack upon certain conditions.
There’s no robot that can tell a business profile page from a personal profile page, which is why businesses still have profile pages. They can’t write a robot smart enough to figure out real person names from busines names. But for all their internal rules, here are the Bots!
The Facebook Robots
After researching other Facebook bans, here’s the robots I know about:
1. The Inbox Protector Robot: If you send messages to too many people using the compose tool within a 24 hour period, this robot boots you from facebook after you send to certain magic number of people. He causes problems when you are communicating the same information to a large number of people who really want the information.
2. The Friend Protector Robot: If you click the “Add a Friend” button on too many people within a 24 hour period, this robot boots you from facebook. She causes problems when you really do need to connect to a large number of people in a short period of time.
3. The Scraper Robot: If you copy (Cntl-C) information from too many friends’ profile pages within a 24 period, this robot boots you from facebook. He causes problems when you are not a spammer, but need key information from your friends’ pages.
4. The Anti-Porn Robot: If you post inappropriate material that gets flagged, this robot boots you from Facebook. She causes problems when you have a profile set to Adults only and someone still flags you, or if you are flagged by a jerk.
How Long Till You Get Back on Facebook
The best part is that the robots are set on timers. So after exactly 3 weeks, your profile is automatically turned back on. The email is signed from someone in Support, like “Bob.” I’m sure that for each bot, you receive a different kind of message. This is a generic email programmed to be sent out when they automatically turn your profile back on.
How to Avoid the Robots
You will get a Warning message as you approach the limit on the number of messages or friend invites. Heed that Warning! That Warning is also a cue to the timer in the robot to start watching you. If you proceed to hit okay, everything will seem fine for a little while, then suddenly, your login ability will be taken away. And you will have gotten banned.
How to Play with the Robots
You can safely test the waters by continuing to add friends (maybe 50 or so) until you get the Warning message. When the Warning appears, hit Cancel, do not hit Okay. Then, do not add any more friends for 24 hours. This will successfully navigate you away from the robots, and allow you to continue with normal profile activity. If you try to add a friend later and you see the warning, you’ll know that it hasn’t been 24 hours.
I suspect the Robots will continue to get smarter, and eventually control your every thought. In the meantime, you can enjoy playing with them on Facebook.
For more business coaching, contact Mark Berry at mark@littlelovecoach.com
