October 30, 2019 UPDATE: After six months of suffering, Facebook finally took this website out of their “jail” and now I can use the URL to this blog again (at least, for now)!
Thanks to everyone for their support and commiserations.
Or maybe, Facebook just hates ME!
They keep burning my book blog!
On Friday and Saturday (October 18 and 19), I posted to about 10-12 Facebook pages (either directly or shared from my blog’s Facebook page), the link to the Mailchimp landing page for my most recent book review. I also used that on the Facebook page I made for this blog, which I shared my own personal page. This morning, I used that same link in my comment on the Facebook page Readers Coffeehouse in a thread asking what people were doing this weekend. Almost immediately afterwards, Facebook began deleting ALL of those posts with that link, saying they were spam, as follows:
We don’t allow people to use misleading or inaccurate information to get likes, followers or shares.
We define spam as things like:
Artificially increasing content distribution to make money
Requiring people to like, share or recommend content before they can view it
Pretending to be someone else
Now, I’m unsure why, but for some reason, this keeps happening to me on Facebook. I’ve done everything in my power to make sure that ever time I post to Facebook that I’m following the rules of those pages. I try to interact with people on those groups, and I try to vary the wording of my posts and personalize them for the group I’m posting to, but to no avail. Somehow, every so often, I get flagged as spamming or going against Facebook’s community standards. It could be that there are some people on Facebook who dislike me, and are reporting me directly to Facebook. Or it could be that Facebook just doesn’t like book review blogs.
I’m frustrated, and I’m tired of this. As some of my readers know, I started book blogging in 2013, with a Blogspot blog. After Facebook decided – for the second time – that the URL to that blog went against their precious community standards, I migrated all of my posts to this WordPress platform. Things went well for a while, until about six months ago, when Facebook once again decided my blog goes against their community standards, and banned my using the direct URLs to this blog from both Facebook and Instagram. To get around this, I built a Mailchimp landing page, and converted my old Blogspot blog posts also into types of landing pages – giving me two ways to put links on Facebook that would help people there get to my blog here. Then today, it happened again.
Well, I’m not moving my blog again, but I’m guessing that Facebook (and possibly also Instagram) want me gone. So… I’ll just have to spend less time on Facebook, and more time on twitter and other blogs.
If anyone can tell me how to resolve this problem with Facebook, I’d really appreciate any help you can give me!
The Chocolate Lady's Book Review Blog 
Hey, Davida! I just read your post. I didn’t get to check your Facebook posts, but here’s what might be happening:
Facebook wants its users to join and maintain conversations, whether it’s on a group or in the comments. If you are repeatedly including links in your comments in order to spread the news about your blog, that is definitely defined as spam. Not only on Facebook, but mostly everywhere else. Facebook has tighter rules on spam.
The idea is that if you want to promote you blog by putting your links in front of as many people as possible, it is viewed as advertising and facebook (and many others) expect you to pay for it. Because that is their business. They let the conversation flow free, but if you want to promote, you have to pay.
So, posting your link in comments is a no-no tactic.
The workaround is to take part in conversations and be naturally interested in what people dicuss there. A conversation is not a promotion wall. If people will like your participation, some will check your profile and follow your unique blog link from there. Or from the article links in the posts. But make only 1 post per article on your facebook page and share some posts from the page on your profile. It’s a bit cumbersome and slow, but it’s free and pretty safe. Otherwise you have to pay.
Although a bit more relaxed, the same goes for Twitter and maybe others: conversation is free, promotion is paid and limited.
Hope this helps.
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Facebook does weird things sometimes. I wouldn’t take it personally.
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That is too bad that this is happening to you Davida. I have not advice to offer as I do not use facebook except for personal posts.
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Wow, that’s really frustrating. I rarely use Facebook anyway because I dislike it for other reasons, but this certainly makes me dislike it even more.
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I’m sorry for you, my friend, as you’ve appeared to have entered the third circle of FB hell. If their almighty bot-demons have black-balled you, I don’t know how to get you out. Keep trying whatever you can think of!! Your voice is valuable and “they” are idiots.
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Thanks!
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FB sucks. They’re always arbitrary. I’m sorry you’ve had this frustrating issue.
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Thanks, darling!
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I saw your posts in the FB blogger groups this morning, sadly I have no advice to offer, FB has always been a law unto itself and I increasingly dislike it. I’m now following your blog in my WordPress reader so that I see your blog posts. I hope you’re able to sort this out.
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Thanks, Karen, and you know I’ve been following you via the reader here as well! I’m very close to closing down my FB page (and Instagram account) for this blog.
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After Facebook banned the automatic link from WordPress, I started copying the link from each post into Facebook, which then shows the thumbnail picture and the title of the post, and copying and pasting the first few lines into the post. It’s not ideal, but Facebook doesn’t seem to mind it because it comes across as a personal post … whereas I assume Mailchimp is flagged up as advertising. I don’t know if that’s any help, and obviously it’ll be a pain if you want to post the same thing in a dozen different groups, but I would think it’s probably objecting to Mailchimp rather than to you.
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I’d agree, but first they objected to my Blogspot URL, and then they objected to this blog’s URL. I always put some text into my posts before I add the URL, and I’m always changing up that text.
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That is weird! Hope you can get it sorted.
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