Nowadays, over 5 million people use Facebook for advertising, 80 million businesses use Facebook for corporate purposes and over 70% of products are discovered via this social network. The advertisement rates are stunning — and there are many of those who violate advertisement rules just to increase sales rates. Some customers violate the advertising rules accidentally, but still, some violate them deliberately, on the contrary, trying to cheat on Facebook and its users.
To protect users and honest advertisers from fraudulent activities, Facebook blocks advertising accounts when it distinguishes suspicious activities. Naturally, it is not possible to manually monitor all accounts, so in most cases, this happens automatically as Facebook uses algorithms for detecting prohibited content and activities.
Facebook protects its reputation and the finances of advertisers. The algorithm blocks ads or payment methods when actions or content seem suspicious. The main task of the algorithm is to calculate bad advertisers.
Have you ever experienced Facebook sanctions?
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Kids Content
Facebook often considers it wrong to publish pictures of children swimming or playing outdoor games. Even pictures of the XIX century can be banned if they don’t meet Facebook’s content policy. Visible buttocks and breasts are forbidden, but pictures of breastfeeding are allowed to be published. From the documents published by The Guardian, it is clear that moderators should first remove comments that contain a direct threat to specific individuals.
In particular, moderators should remove calls for a coup and political threats but are not obliged to do this if one user threatens another. Photographs and videos of violence against children are also forbidden, but only if it involves explicit sadism or justification of what is happening. Strict rules apply to the publication of photos of naked people, but there are also exceptions: it is possible to publish photos that are historical documents.
Spam and Unwanted Advertising
Spam and unwanted advertising can cost not only a social network account but also lead to large fines. Facebook prohibits the use of bots and any way to illegally increase the number of friends and subscribers. It is forbidden to advertise fakes and maintain customers publishing them.
Copyright
The use of photos and videos belonging to other people. There are special algorithms that monitor copyright. The page URL address should not contain any insults, and the user's photo should not appeal to illegal actions in any way. Otherwise, copyright violators risk being blocked.
Discrimination Practices
Discrimination practices — humiliating words and expressions that can offend a certain community of people. For example, Facebook bans accounts for publishing content with the comparison of humans to animals that in certain cultures are considered inferior in intellectual or physical abilities.
Humiliating descriptions of appearance, the publication of photos artificially edited to highlight something to humiliate people are also in the risk area. Those wishing death, serious illness, or injury, who charges others in criminal or illegal behaviors, blames for sexual orientation, or even simply uses swearing words will also be banned by Facebook moderators. Here are also hate speeches — perhaps the most complex and controversial category of information that can be banned by Facebook.
Facebook moderator-assessor can consider any aggressive or ridiculous statements or claims relating group of people to be a violation of Facebook content policy. A person or group should not be compared with dirt, bacteria, diseases, etc. They cannot be compared to animals that are considered to be inferior intellectually or physically. Facebook users also can’t freely claim that a person is physically, mentally, or morally inferior.
People are forbidden to express contempt for people or groups of people, for example, using words like "I hate", "I don't like", and "worst of all", and to express disgust. Those accounts that were confirmed to have any verifiable threats and calls for violence against any person, bullying and harassment, including allegations of human sexuality and derogatory descriptions of appearances, the mockery of illness, injury, or premature death (including alleged death) will be instantly blocked.
Verifiable Threats
Verifiable threats — credible allegations of intent to commit violence against a person, group of people or places, calls for violence against specific persons or groups of persons, instructions on how to manufacture or use weapons (if the aim is to kill or injure persons), disclosure of the identity of persons at particular risk. All this will be another reason to block the Facebook business account.
Terrorism
Facebook prohibits publishing any content: text, photos, images, etc. praising terrorist organizations and terrorists, serial and mass murderers, criminal organizations, and their actions.
Violence
It is prohibited to publish any material (including instructions) about committing suicide or self-inflicted injuries, to publish scenes of violence against people or animals with signatures or comments of the author of the publication describing the pleasure of suffering of others or in any way supporting violence.
Dead People
The Facebook policy prohibits the distribution o video recordings of dying, wounded, and dead people, if such recordings contain a dismembered body (except in a medical setting), visible internal organs, burnt or burning people, and victims of cannibalism.
Personal Information
Personal information of others. For instance, vehicle registration numbers, government-issued identity cards, various digital identifiers, including passwords, etc. as well as bank account or bank card information, private phone, and e-mail numbers, chat, and messaging system identifiers, etc. all these content can lead to a permanent or a temporary account ban.
Сommercial Spam
It is prohibited to publish content from compromised accounts, distribute commercial spam, create or use fake accounts to impersonate any company, organization, known person, or individual.
Сryptocurrencies
Facebook has banned any advertising related to cryptocurrencies — "We want people to keep finding and learning about new products and services from Facebook ads without fear of fraud or deceit. However, many companies advertise binary options, ICOs, and cryptocurrencies that are not currently quite safe,” the official Facebook blog says.
According to this recent change in Facebook’s advertising policy, advertise financial products and services that are often associated with misleading or deceptive advertising methods is now prohibited. Among the methods often used by scammers are binary options, initial coin placements (ICOs), and cryptocurrencies the information on which from now will be properly filtered.
Poor Advertising Quality
Poor advertising quality — all advertisements will be judged for their accuracy and relevance to the target audience. If the advertisement doesn’t meet these requirements, it will require more time for their approval or the account may be blocked. Things like this affect advertising quality:
- Using a hook — using a copy that does not display all the information or bait with inaccurate information.
- Too much text above the image — Even though Facebook allows to show ads where text occupies a bit more than 20% of the space on the image, it can block advertisement when the text is too big. To double-check the percentage of text in advertisements customers can use the Image Text Check tool on Facebook.
Landing Page or Website of Poor Quality
Facebook reviews any links to websites to make sure that they match the advertisements. So Facebook customers should be ready for a total scan. Poor quality on the target page includes:
- Too many pop-ups or distractions;
- Insufficient information;
- Content that is misleading or unrelated to the ad;
- Lack of functionality — broken links, poor quality images, unplayable videos, etc.
Private Sales of Alcohol and Tobacco
Facebook prohibits all private sales, tenders, acts of transfer, or donation of alcohol and tobacco products via its network. Any brand that publishes content related to the sale or transfer of these products will be required to restrict it to people under the age of 18. Although the company’s policy already prohibits the sale of tobacco and alcohol on Facebook Marketplace, the platform is expanding its ban on regular messages from users on these topics as well. Both live moderators and technical solutions will be used for data processing.
These measures were taken due to the growth of e-cigarettes in the US. Last year, the largest producer of electronic cigarettes in the U.S. Juul paid popular Instagram users to promote its device. This became the main reason why Facebook decided to make its advertising policy even stricter.
Body Parts
Body parts also fell under the prohibition of Facebook This rule also falls within the scope of personal health policy. Any advertising that shows close-ups of body parts is not allowed, even if the context is harmless. To avoid an undesired ban because of this issue carefully selects images and shoot any content for Facebook keeping this rule in mind.
Pictures Before and After
Customers can publish before & after images on their Facebook profiles. However, according to the Facebook advertising rule No.19 about Personal Health, advertisements must not contain images before and after depicting the human body. The content of the advertisements must not imply or attempt to create a negative self-perception to promote diet, weight loss, or other health-related products.
Derogatory Personal, Political, and Religious Content
Facebook users should not promote any intent of violence against creed, sex, race, national origin, religious affiliation, etc. Facebook advocates freedom of political speech, however, prohibits derogatory language implemented to any group of people.
Spy Cams and Surveillance Equipment
Also, the eye of Facebook restrictions fell on spy cams and surveillance equipment. The advertisements related to technologies like trackers, spy cams, and surveillance equipment is not carefully monitored.
Penny Auctions
Penny auctions advertisement on Facebook is another undesired type of content that Facebook strives to eliminate from the advertisement market. According to the company’s policy, it is because of such auctions people start thinking they can get unreal discounts but eventually go into a money pit.
Pornography
Facebook cares about its customers of all ages and has set strict borders on pornographic content. No advertisements containing nudity, or pornographic materials of any kind can leak into the network so that nobody could be disturbed by the content published in the most popular social network.
Conclusion
From all of the above-mentioned entrepreneurs should conclude that it is better in advance to get acquainted with Facebook’s policy on the prohibited topics for advertising. The proper content implementation and abiding simple Facebook’s rules can increase the effectiveness of advertisements as well as retain business holders from significant monetary losses as advertising is not that cheap to risk losing money invested and blow up the reputation of the Facebook business account because of negligence during publication.
