Facebook Pages have become an important part of your online marketing strategy. You put a lot of effort in designing and managing them, and getting all those important fans. You post four to five times a week and keep your audience happy and occupied. Everything is going as planned and future looks rosy.
…and then you lose that page!
Has this happened to you? It sure did happen to me; twice…and let me tell you it does not feel good!
The first time was in September last year (2011) when I lost my Facebook Page I had created for the readers of my blog. This one you are reading right now. I had some good interaction happening with the Page and there were hundreds of fans who had Liked the Page.
Then one rainy morning I received a blunt email from Facebook saying that they had deleted my Page. Bang! Just like that. No warning, no nothing. Just one evil click of Facebook tech’s mouse and my Page was gone forever.
Hello,
You created a Page (“Facebook Advertising | Social Media Marketing”)* that violated Section 5.6 of our Statement of Rights & Responsibilities, which says:
“You will not use our copyrights or trademarks (including Facebook, the Facebook and F Logos, FB, Face, Poke, Wall and 32665), or any confusingly similar marks, without our written permission.”
This Page will not be reinstated. Continued misuse of Facebook’s features could result in the permanent loss of your account.
If you have any questions or concerns, we encourage you to review our Statement by visiting http://www.facebook.com/terms.php.
The Facebook Team
The email didn’t actually reveal why my Page was deleted, but it said that you can’t use Facebook, the Facebook, F-Logos, FB, Face, Poke, Wall or 32665 with your Facebook Pages. Based on this my guess is that I lost my Page because of the name I’ve given to it. I had created the page for my blog which was, and still is*, called Facebook Advertising | Social Media Marketing. Hence the logically identical name on my Facebook Page.
What the email did say clearly though was that my Facebook Page will not be reinstated! They didn’t even offer me a possibility to explain myself, fix the problem or reply to their email. I actually tried to reply but they never got back to me.
What bugs me the most was that I could have corrected the problem very easily. I had not yet applied for the custom URL so I could have just changed the name and everybody would have gone home happy. But nooo! Click, bang! You’re dead and that’s the end of it!
(Just in case you’re wondering what that cryptical 32665 is, it is the number where you can update your Facebook status by texting FBOOK 32665).
Facebook is seriously protecting their rights
Facebook is very protective of its intellectual property and it is determined to safe guard it with a vengeance. You may have heard about cases where Facebook has sued different parties for taking their name in vain. For instance they sued Teachbook.com for using the word ‘book‘ in their name. Yes, you read that right. Facebook thinks they own the copyright to every book-word on the planet!
Another example is where Facebook is suing the holders of 25 domain names referred to as typosquatters. These are websites which URL’s resemble facebook.com type wise. For example facemook.com or facefook.com. Facebook is accusing them of infringing its precious domain name. This I can understand, but if these websites have totally different agendas and don’t even resemble Facebook it’s a bit of an overkill.
Facebook expert Mari Smith took down her popular WhyFacebook.com blog in late 2010. According to Mari, Facebook was on a mission to reclaim all domain names which contain the word ‘facebook’. It looks like Facebook has actually taken possession of Mari’s domain as it now redirects to the Facebook homepage. This cause of action actually makes me worry as I too have the name ‘facebook’ in the domain name of this blog. So far they haven’t contacted me so perhaps I’m safe.
For now.
Once bitten, twice shy
The second time I lost my Facebook Page was about a week ago when Facebook took down the Page I had created to replace the one I lost earlier. This time I made sure I didn’t have anything related to the Facebook -name in the Page and so it was called “Social Media Marketing Advice”. You’d think that would have been ok? Again, here is another grim email:
Hello,
You created a Page (“Social Media Marketing Advice”) that violated Section 5.6 of our Statement of Rights & Responsibilities, which says:
“You will not use our copyrights or trademarks (including Facebook, the Facebook and F Logos, FB, Face, Poke, Wall and 32665), or any confusingly similar marks, without our written permission.”
This Page will not be reinstated. Continued misuse of Facebook’s features could result in the permanent loss of your account.
If you have any questions or concerns, we encourage you to review our Statement by visiting http://www.facebook.com/terms.php.
The Facebook Team
Ok, what is going on with me and the Facebook Team?!
Are they determined to kill everything I put up there? The Page was called Social Media Marketing Advice so why on earth would that qualify for a take down?
After closely reviewing their terms of usage (again) I came to the conclusion that this time they took the Page down because I had used one of the popular F-logos in my graphics. Now come on! Everybody and their butler use them all over the web!
You can see the infamous F-tile (among other famous social media logos) at the bottom of the image I used on my custom landing page. Doesn’t this make you wonder if it really was necessary to kill my Page?
Luckily I still have my Twitter account alive and kickin’ for the service. Twitter is not nearly as picky on these infringement issues as Facebook.
In their terms Facebook states that if they remove your content for infringing someone else’s copyright, and you believe they’ve removed it by mistake, Facebook will provide you with an opportunity to appeal. Well that’s all great, however, they don’t provide any links to this procedure on their emails. You will have to look for it and dig it out from their legal mumbo jumbo docs.
By the way, the Facebook’s DMCA counter-notice form is here should you ever feel the need to use it. I think I will actually give it a go and see what happens. I’ll keep you posted on that.
What you need to do so you don’t lose your Facebook Page?
If you are managing Facebook Pages which violate Facebook’s terms and conditions I would strongly advise you to clean them up or get rid of them. Especially pay attention to trademark infringements and copyright issues. For example if you have a Facebook Page called Google AdSense Advertising chances are it will be deleted without notice sooner or later; and you will risk losing your entire Facebook account.
Here is the entire 5.6 section of Facebook’s Statement of Rights & Responsibilities. It deals with protecting other people’s rights on Facebook. If you are suspecting that you might be violating other parties’ rights read this through and fix the problems before it’s too late.
- You will not post content or take any action on Facebook that infringes or violates someone else’s rights or otherwise violates the law.
- We (Facebook) can remove any content or information you post on Facebook if we believe that it violates this Statement.
- We will provide you with tools to help you protect your intellectual property rights. To learn more, visit our How to Report Claims of Intellectual Property Infringement page.
- If we remove your content for infringing someone else’s copyright, and you believe we removed it by mistake, we will provide you with an opportunity to appeal.
- If you repeatedly infringe other people’s intellectual property rights, we will disable your account when appropriate.
- You will not use our copyrights or trademarks (including Facebook, the Facebook and F Logos, FB, Face, Poke, Wall and 32665), or any confusingly similar marks, without our written permission.
- If you collect information from users, you will: obtain their consent, make it clear you (and not Facebook) are the one collecting their information, and post a privacy policy explaining what information you collect and how you will use it.
- You will not post anyone’s identification documents or sensitive financial information on Facebook.
- You will not tag users or send email invitations to non-users without their consent.
For the time being I’m done with creating more Facebook Pages for myself. Instead, for this blog I’m now managing a Facebook Group as well as a LinkedIn Group.
Facebook has upgraded their Groups recently and they are not that sensitive to all kinds of rules and regulations. Actually, in some cases Facebook Groups work better than Pages.
Have you had similar experiences with your Facebook Pages? Have you perhaps suffered a loss as well? Let me know and let’s frown together.
(*) Facebook Advertising | Social Media Marketing is now called Social Media Revolver.
[Images – Main Photo by Ahmed Adly from Pexels; Supergirl: iStockPhoto; other images from their respective websites and/or social platforms]
Kris Olin, MSc (Econ.) * Editor in Chief at Social Media Revolver * Web Designer * SEO Specialist * Author of the Facebook Advertising Guide. Follow Kris on Twitter and LinkedIn. See his photos at Flickr.
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