Somehow I did something really awful tonight by attempting to share a link on Facebook. Apparently, Facebook didn’t like what I was doing and they put me in Facebook jail. A notice popped up that said that I could not share on Facebook for two days and that if I tried, I could extend their block on the feature or my account could even get terminated. Using “terminate” and “Facebook” in the same sentence are fighting words. The idea of that doesn’t settle nicely with me.
What did I do that was so terrible? I don’t even understand what I did wrong and I feel like I have to be extremely careful now. Doesn’t Facebook encourage sharing, interaction, and engaging? This has to be a mistake because there is no way that I should be in Facebook prison for trying to pass along quality content. What I wanted to share was definitely worth passing along to others.
Here’s how Facebook’s bust went down. I was minding my own business (or as much as you can really mind your own business when you’re on Twitter), when I came across a family’s blog through a retweet of someone I follow. The family’s story really touched me and I found myself reading post after post. The blog was created in 2010 and updates are put up almost daily so I didn’t read every single article but I read quite a few. There was a sick child involved and, of course, I found myself crying as I read and read and read. I thought that I would share the link to one of the posts but, for whatever reason, Facebook considered it “abusive.” I thought that perhaps there was an issue with the plugin on the site. I thought that maybe the share button was broken. I tried to work around it and copied and pasted the link right onto my Facebook Timeline. Again, the message came up. I have truly been banned from sharing all links on my personal Facebook page. It would almost be laughable if it didn’t annoy me so much.
Facebook’s warning told me that my ban on sharing is temporary and that it will last about two days. As I said above, the pop-up stated that during these two days, I shouldn’t share any links. Doing so could extend the feature ban and I definitely don’t want to do that! I feel like I’ve been wrongly penalized. I guess being innocent until proven guilty doesn’t apply to Facebook “crimes.”
I’ve never been in Facebook jail before so I don’t know what it’s like. I know people who have been punished like this for adding friends or messaging people but this has never happened to me. Since Facebook said that the ban was for “about” two days, how will I know when I’m sprung from jail and can legally share again? I read through Facebook’s information on feature bans but I didn’t see anything that addressed that. I don’t want to try to share and prolong this ridiculous disciplinary action. Will Facebook notify me when I’m in good standing again or am I going to have to be ultra-risky in
a few days by trying to share a link without knowing what the consequence might be? Should I make a list of my friends and the pages I “like,” in case Facebook shuts down my account?
Prior to the link that left me in the Facebook penitentiary, the last link that I posted was 12 hours earlier and it was a link to Dropbox. Dropbox! How harmless is that? I really don’t think that anything I’ve done can be perceived as being abusive so I don’t understand Facebook’s logic here. I guess this is how my friends felt when they were in the same position for extending a friend request or for sending a Facebook message. It seems that feature bans are sometimes put in place without much cause.
Have you ever been banned from using any of Facebook’s features? If so, what did you do that landed you in Facebook prison? How long was your sentence and, once released, were you able to use the feature again?
NOTE: As I don’t think I’m going to be able to share this post on Facebook, it would be lovely if you would do the honors! Thanks!
