Chris Meyer of CM Photographics is what you might call a Facebook fanboy. He has been singing the praises of Facebook to the professional photography community for quite some time now. Meyer’s business is a case study on Facebook’s very own advertising page and he’s even lectured at a DWF convention on the subject of FB marketing for photographers. That means that when Chris Meyer speaks of Facebook danger, we should listen! Chris recounts his own recent experiences which nearly cost him his Facebook account below…
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About 2 weeks ago I received 3 emails at the exact same time from what appeared to be an automated FB email account, saying:
You uploaded a photo that violates our Terms of Use, and this photo has been removed. Facebook does not allow photos that attack an individual or group, or that contain nudity, drug use, violence, or other violations of the Terms of Use. These policies are designed to ensure Facebook remains a safe, secure and trusted environment for all users, including the many children who use the site.
If you have any questions or concerns, you can visit our FAQ page at http://www.facebook.com/help.php?topic=wphotos.
The Facebook Team
I immediately emailed back, trying to figure out what photos were offensive or whatever, so that I could then remove anything else that may be viewed in the same light, etc.
After not hearing a response for a few days, I kind of forgot about it… Until Monday evening… when I got an email saying that:
Our systems indicate that you’ve been misusing certain features on the site. This email serves as a warning. Misuse of Facebook’s features or violating Facebook’s terms of use may result in your account being disabled. Thanks in advance for your understanding and cooperation.
Please refer to http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=421 for further information.
The Facebook Team
At this point, this email was not a warning, because my account had become deactivated already. So once you reach this point, there is basically no chance of recovery.
If you look on the FB site, there really isn’t much of a ‘contact me’ or any sort of helpful conflict resolution for this type of a situation… And looking through the links that they provided did me no good at all. It explained what I already knew… That I had violated the TOU, and that images had been removed, and my account had been deactivated. To this day, I still have no idea what photos were found to be in violation.
Luckily because I am featured on the FB advertising page for small businesses, and because I have worked with FB, and their PR company in the past, I had some people that I could contact directly to help me out with the situation, and was finally able to get reinstated.
Upon getting reinstated I received the following email from one of the User Operations people:
Photo content that you uploaded has been removed for violating Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. Photos containing nudity or other graphic or sexually suggestive content are not allowed. Unfortunately, for technical reasons, we are unable to provide further information about the removed content.
Ultimately I urge everyone to be EXTRA careful of the photos that you upload. The photos that I uploaded that were flagged were pretty mild boudoir pics. Definitely no nudity involved, and not really that suggestive at all. I have seen swimsuit pics that showed more than I did… I personally will no longer be uploading any boudoir photos, and will leave that up to the discression of the clients if they chose to upload them or not. Too much of my business revolves around Facebook to risk something like this again, where the judgement of what is in violation or not seems to be far to arbitrary.
I have asked their team (for whatever it is worth) to re-evaluate their suspension process… because if I didn’t have the contact info that I did, it would be next to impossible to get your account back up and running…
Hope this helps someone to avoid the mistakes and the downtime that I just had.
Chris Meyer – Photographer and Facebook Marketing Expert
DWF members discuss this with Chris
8 Comments at "Facebook Expert Urges You To Cover Your Naughty Bits"
Wow, scary story- thanks for the info. Glad we can learn from your mishaps and not have them happen to us!
It’s scary that a site that so many rely so heavily on offers no recourse. NONE!
“If you look on the FB site, there really isn’t much of a ‘contact me’ or any sort…”
Facebook; I have very mixed feeling about it, both the site and the company. They just kind of go their merry way doing what they feel they want to do, at times doing so with complete disregard to others.
The other day I received an email from a colleague that talked about “Ah this is so sad”. I later found out that he was reacting to a suggestion that he and others go to my wall and write on it, so as to make my Facebook experience a better one.
The problem with the above is that it implies that I’m very lonely out there, which has many implications, and possible ramifications. When I received his email needless to say I was stunned!
My comment to Facebook is to stay out of my life, as it is none of their business. And to cease implying to others what is none of their (Facebook’s) business, when they (Facebook) have not a clue about.
In short they have really pissed me off.
These attitudes among providers are becoming pervasive. Two years ago I made a purchase of time on a legal adult website. There are millions of them, and many perfectly normal law-abiding citizens use them. I used a Visa card from a large bank to complete the transaction. It turns out that the providers processed my visa card through THEIR PayPal account, not through a standard merchant bank arrangement. Two months later, my PayPal account, which I used fairly regularly on eBay and elsewhere, was frozen, then suspended. My money was locked up for six months. I was given NO explanation of why. It took up tons of my time investigating to find out that PayPal felt I had violated their TOU’s by using the account for “explicit” sexual content. I didn’t even know that the providers used THEIR PayPal account to process my Visa card. Fortunately, it was a small amount of money that was locked up for six months and fortunately PayPal isn’t a crucial part of my business. But when I subsequently sat down to actually read my agreement with PayPal, I was shocked at the leverage they have (and they’re not a bank, so they’re immune to federal regulation.) I have a number of photographer friends with PayPal accounts, and when I related the story to them one said, “gee, I have about $30,000 in my PayPal account.” An arbitrary action by PayPal could effectively shut down his business, and he might never know why. There needs to be far, far greater transparency and regulation of these “phantom” operations – there’s no brick and mortar office of Facebook or Twitter or PayPal or MySpace where I can walk in and sit down with a manager to discuss my complaints. They simply float out there in the ether and do whatever they damned well please. ‘Scary.
One of the things that really concerns me about the actions of Facebook is something like the following situation.
You have a 13 or 14 year old kid, who is having a tough time at with a group of peers. Maybe he or she is having a series of down days (as in going though). Perhaps he or she is sensitive to being heckled.
The next thing that they find out through some of their peers is that Facebook is suggesting that they are a little, down, feeling lonely. So go out there and “write something on their wall, so as to make their experience a better one.”
Fast forward to that kid’s feeling’s getting the better of them, and low and behold you have a kid with slit wrists.
The end result is that you have a corporate entity that has made some bucks via their social engineering web site at the expense of a dead kid… Now dosen’t that leave you with nice warm fuzzy feelings about Facebook?
I too am getting this same nonsense from facebook. They haven’t even removed any pictures. I don’t know what they are even offended by and there is no way to contact them to find out. I keep getting emails and warning statements on my main page but I still don’t know what got flagged and nothing has been removed. I don’t know what to do and there seems to be no way to stop it from going the way yours has.
I too have gotten this as well as MANY of my other friends all today.. and I have all G-rated pics..
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