Social Media disabled

lc1102002 · Aug 10, 2021

Hi guys!
I’m a family photographer and have worked for the last 5 years building a following on Facebook and Instagram. I worked hard for a 5 star rating. I spent money using Ad’s. As many of you know you must have a personal Facebook acct to open a business account and Instagram was linked as well.
3 weeks ago I logged on to FB and received a dreaded message that my account is disabled and to uploaded my ID. Which I did. Then I got a message due to covid there might not be anyone available to review my ID and my acct will be permanently disabled.
No reason. Just said I broke community guidelines. It appears they are referring to my personal acct however I can’t log in so all my business accts are frozen in time and inaccessible. Seriously I post nothing questionable on my personal acct. I post my dog and my kids accomplishments. I’m not political. I don’t associate with groups or people who are. I have zero clue. Researching everywhere has lead me to thousands of folks like me. Apparently caught in mindless bot intelligence. Sadly FB has no support phone number or email. All roads lead me directly back to requiring my ID which won’t be reviewed.
As a photographer who relied heavily on interacting through social media for promos, communicating with my community and local families I feel a terrible loss!
I guess this post is not only a warning to others but an opportunity to open a conversation from other photographers here. How many have been able to keep their business afloat without social media? What are your thoughts?

mrca · Aug 11, 2021

Guess that tells us whether we should spend time and money advertising on FB.

Space Face · Aug 11, 2021

I have never been and will never be on Faceache nor Instagram or such like.

TreeofLifeStairs · Aug 12, 2021

lc1102002 said:
Hi guys!
I’m a family photographer and have worked for the last 5 years building a following on Facebook and Instagram. I worked hard for a 5 star rating. I spent money using Ad’s. As many of you know you must have a personal Facebook acct to open a business account and Instagram was linked as well.
3 weeks ago I logged on to FB and received a dreaded message that my account is disabled and to uploaded my ID. Which I did. Then I got a message due to covid there might not be anyone available to review my ID and my acct will be permanently disabled.
No reason. Just said I broke community guidelines. It appears they are referring to my personal acct however I can’t log in so all my business accts are frozen in time and inaccessible. Seriously I post nothing questionable on my personal acct. I post my dog and my kids accomplishments. I’m not political. I don’t associate with groups or people who are. I have zero clue. Researching everywhere has lead me to thousands of folks like me. Apparently caught in mindless bot intelligence. Sadly FB has no support phone number or email. All roads lead me directly back to requiring my ID which won’t be reviewed.
As a photographer who relied heavily on interacting through social media for promos, communicating with my community and local families I feel a terrible loss!
I guess this post is not only a warning to others but an opportunity to open a conversation from other photographers here. How many have been able to keep their business afloat without social media? What are your thoughts?

That really sucks. Do you have your own website in addition to you fb or ig pages? I have my own business (not photography related) and get all my leads from organic internet searches. This isn’t an immediate solution since it takes a long time for your business to start coming up organically but it doesn’t cost anything (at least marketing wise).

lc1102002 · Aug 14, 2021

TreeofLifeStairs said:
That really sucks. Do you have your own website in addition to you fb or ig pages? I have my own business (not photography related) and get all my leads from organic internet searches. This isn’t an immediate solution since it takes a long time for your business to start coming up organically but it doesn’t cost anything (at least marketing wise).

Yes. I have my own website. I get a decent amount of leads from google searches.

SquarePeg · Aug 14, 2021

lc1102002 said:
Hi guys!
I’m a family photographer and have worked for the last 5 years building a following on Facebook and Instagram. I worked hard for a 5 star rating. I spent money using Ad’s. As many of you know you must have a personal Facebook acct to open a business account and Instagram was linked as well.
3 weeks ago I logged on to FB and received a dreaded message that my account is disabled and to uploaded my ID. Which I did. Then I got a message due to covid there might not be anyone available to review my ID and my acct will be permanently disabled.
No reason. Just said I broke community guidelines. It appears they are referring to my personal acct however I can’t log in so all my business accts are frozen in time and inaccessible. Seriously I post nothing questionable on my personal acct. I post my dog and my kids accomplishments. I’m not political. I don’t associate with groups or people who are. I have zero clue. Researching everywhere has lead me to thousands of folks like me. Apparently caught in mindless bot intelligence. Sadly FB has no support phone number or email. All roads lead me directly back to requiring my ID which won’t be reviewed.
As a photographer who relied heavily on interacting through social media for promos, communicating with my community and local families I feel a terrible loss!
I guess this post is not only a warning to others but an opportunity to open a conversation from other photographers here. How many have been able to keep their business afloat without social media? What are your thoughts?

That’s terrible. I know a few people who have been temporarily banned use to controversial subjects but no one who has had their account deleted! My brother runs a charity and has had a lot of issues with their Facebook page.

I wonder if your account was hacked and used to break guidelines. It’s awful that there is no recourse for you to have this reviewed and fixed. Thanks for the warning. I only use social media for personal use as I’m not a professional photographer but it would still be very annoying and massively inconvenient to be banned.

Can you have a friend create a similarly named business page to direct people to your website so if they do a Facebook search they can find you?

flyingPhoto · Aug 21, 2021

This has NOTHING to do with with the user doing any rule violations.

It is an aspect of Face Book trying to get personal data on users.

I have had 3 face book accounts frozen in the last 2 years because of "violating rules".

What I can tell is that after my accounts were blank, and barely used, i joined a photo group on FB... within 6 hours of doing so, each account was "flagged as innapropriate".

First time for each account i merely had to read an email sent to the email address used to make the fb account, and hit a verify button. 1 week later each account was frozen and demanded that I send photocopies of
Drivers Liscense
Passport
Birth Certificate

The thing is, there is no actual proof that the demands for photocopies actually came/comes from Face Book, or if its someone hacking your account for a identify theft scam

Rickbb · Aug 21, 2021

never heard of FB asking for ID, red flag big time, scammer alert.

webestang64 · Aug 24, 2021

Found this in the help section......

Why Facebook may ask you to upload an ID | Facebook Help Center

There are a few reasons you may be asked to send in a copy of your ID to Facebook.

www.facebook.com

flyingPhoto · Aug 24, 2021

its an illegal scam on facebooks part. thats all it is.

They dont accept codes sent to the email on register for my account? well they can on their knees and suck something for a long time

smoke665 · Aug 25, 2021

This is something that appears to be happening more frequently. In the past month I've heard of two business owners who've been locked out of their FB accounts for supposedly violating some sort of community standards, one a landscaping design company and the other a classic car sales. Personally I believe much of the problem lies with their censoring software, it's far from perfect. Recently I received an email that I was temporarily suspended for violating community standards in a post. I had commented on a friends post how beautiful their child was and that I'd love to shoot her in studio sometime. Apparently "shoot" is a bad word to the censorship bots.. The email said i had to either accept their decision or explain why they were incorrect in their actions. I did the later, saying it was a common term used by photographers. Within a few hours my account was reinstated. I would have likely been permanently banned if I'd said someone photo "bombed" me.