After spending $57M on Facebook ads, I was kicked off(jordan-shared.medium.com)
jordan-shared.medium.com
After spending $57M on Facebook ads, I was kicked off
https://jordan-shared.medium.com/after-spending-over-57-million-on-facebook-ads-they-kicked-me-and-my-pages-off-without-warning-c6d7e611b01c
300 comments
> Facebook has systematically shut down our 2 small businesses during a pandemic and economic crisis without explanation.
If you've spent $57MM on Facebook ads, are you still considered a "small business"? Perhaps I'm out of touch. I think the warning about building your business on someone else's land still applies but I'm not sure how you get around that when so much of the world's attention is controlled by a few truly giant companies.
If you've spent $57MM on Facebook ads, are you still considered a "small business"? Perhaps I'm out of touch. I think the warning about building your business on someone else's land still applies but I'm not sure how you get around that when so much of the world's attention is controlled by a few truly giant companies.
Another sign that several FAANGs exist as a monopoly. When you're so big that you can provide effectively no customer service to a customer spending in the 10s of millions (and they have no competitor they can go to afterwards) there's a problem.
Looking at shared.com content - If I was forced to guess what might justify this apart from an FB screw up, is that while no single post breaks FB rules. The quantity that they are posting now breaks a new FB policy and that shared.com is seen as producing huge quantities of low quality, click bait content that FB see as 'polluting` their platform, leeching away users/ad viewers.
That is just a guess.
That is just a guess.
I've become increasingly more skeptical when I read those stories.
Let me be clear, I absolutely despise Facebook, but as I understand it, they are massively under fire from all sorts of governments over moderating the content which is posted on their platforms. There is a chance that this business knew they were doing something borderline dodgy in a grey area and Facebook started to weed those "bad" actors out in the moment of heat. I'm not implying that this is the case for sure, but it's not entirely impossible to imagine. Perhaps it's good that when governments take action and put pressure on FAANGs that they are even prepared to cancel a 57M customer if that means staying in business for themselves.
Let me be clear, I absolutely despise Facebook, but as I understand it, they are massively under fire from all sorts of governments over moderating the content which is posted on their platforms. There is a chance that this business knew they were doing something borderline dodgy in a grey area and Facebook started to weed those "bad" actors out in the moment of heat. I'm not implying that this is the case for sure, but it's not entirely impossible to imagine. Perhaps it's good that when governments take action and put pressure on FAANGs that they are even prepared to cancel a 57M customer if that means staying in business for themselves.
This reads like an outcry from a wolf in sheep's clothing.
I see this as a good sign. I haven't used Facebook in over 6 years and don't intend to. Everything Facebook is piholed on my network. But I'm glad they're starting to kick out trash content producers.
And yeah, like others have said, if you spend ~$60M on Facebook ads (among others), I don't think you can call yourself a small business. This is like those 6 year old companies that still consider themselves startups.
If you make enough revenue from content farms to spend that much on ads AND getting kicked off of Facebook jeopardizes your "business" that much, I'm gonna assume you engage in some dark patterns to collect/sell data of your visitors, or to place ads in shady ways, or some form of SEO pollution. At the very least, you run native ads disguised as content. I wouldn't want to have any business with you either.
I see this as a good sign. I haven't used Facebook in over 6 years and don't intend to. Everything Facebook is piholed on my network. But I'm glad they're starting to kick out trash content producers.
And yeah, like others have said, if you spend ~$60M on Facebook ads (among others), I don't think you can call yourself a small business. This is like those 6 year old companies that still consider themselves startups.
If you make enough revenue from content farms to spend that much on ads AND getting kicked off of Facebook jeopardizes your "business" that much, I'm gonna assume you engage in some dark patterns to collect/sell data of your visitors, or to place ads in shady ways, or some form of SEO pollution. At the very least, you run native ads disguised as content. I wouldn't want to have any business with you either.
> If given the chance, I would go to great lengths to adjust my business, to right whatever wrong Facebook believes I have committed. I would change my business model, and shift the direction of my business to ensure I am fully compliant with Facebook’s policies. I have done it many times before. I would like to do it again.
This is a reminder Facebook is too powerful.
This is a reminder Facebook is too powerful.
Sounds to me like this should be the zillionth warning sign that leaning on a FAANG for any significant portion of your business activities is a critical mistake.
If there is no customer support, there is no reliability, period. You can delude yourself into thinking you have a resource, when what you have is a niche in somebody else's place.
Of course this will throw his business into chaos.
Time to sue Facebook for unfair business practices. Or if that's not allowed under the TOS, walk away and find the next path.
Every story I hear paints another stroke of the picture of Facebook turning into a cesspool of AI-controlled careless swamp of attention-grabbing, only mitigated by reporting on their most callous bullshit.
If there is no customer support, there is no reliability, period. You can delude yourself into thinking you have a resource, when what you have is a niche in somebody else's place.
Of course this will throw his business into chaos.
Time to sue Facebook for unfair business practices. Or if that's not allowed under the TOS, walk away and find the next path.
Every story I hear paints another stroke of the picture of Facebook turning into a cesspool of AI-controlled careless swamp of attention-grabbing, only mitigated by reporting on their most callous bullshit.
I cannot wrap my head around how that could even be possible?
They mention they had FB representatives physically received at their offices. Couldn't they join those directly?
I expect that if you spent 57 mio $ in any business, the minimum would be to have a direct telephone contact with a sales rep / account manager and to review the relationship quarterly.
They mention they had FB representatives physically received at their offices. Couldn't they join those directly?
I expect that if you spent 57 mio $ in any business, the minimum would be to have a direct telephone contact with a sales rep / account manager and to review the relationship quarterly.
A business that creates garbage content with a business model that almost exclusively relies on another garbage company's ad platform.
I have very little sympathy for companies that run ads in the first place. This just seems like good news to me.
I have very little sympathy for companies that run ads in the first place. This just seems like good news to me.
I visited "shared.com" and the content looks pretty innocuous. The first story is about office chairs, the second is about celebrity engagements. Sure, it's clickbait, but we're talking about facebook - not nature magazine.
Maybe facebook changed their ad policies to prohibit this kind of content. That's within their right but they owe an explanation to their advertisers and perhaps some wind-down time.
This sort of arbitrary ban-by-T&C, with no judicial oversight, is further evidence that Facebook, and likely all large tech companies, are abusing their monopoly power and need significantly more regulation.
Maybe facebook changed their ad policies to prohibit this kind of content. That's within their right but they owe an explanation to their advertisers and perhaps some wind-down time.
This sort of arbitrary ban-by-T&C, with no judicial oversight, is further evidence that Facebook, and likely all large tech companies, are abusing their monopoly power and need significantly more regulation.
Probably got mistaken for misleading political content. If you search for `"shared.com" "trump"` or `"shared.com" "biden"` there are some pretty tabloid-tier conspiracy articles.
This immediately set off my bullshit detector:
>Our legacy promotional business, Freebies (freebies.com, free.ca), publishes notices of free samples, savings and coupons from great brands. The majority of our expenditure on Facebook is through Freebies.
Translation: Promoted marketing content and clickbait sites of very little actual content value. I'm absolutely unsurprised FB banned them.
>Our legacy promotional business, Freebies (freebies.com, free.ca), publishes notices of free samples, savings and coupons from great brands. The majority of our expenditure on Facebook is through Freebies.
Translation: Promoted marketing content and clickbait sites of very little actual content value. I'm absolutely unsurprised FB banned them.
Much smaller scale, but I got kicked off Adsense after running for over 10 years. No guidance, no feedback, etc. Even our direct Adsense rep said she had no input with the policy teams. They kept about 1.5mm in revenue.
It is hard being wholly dependent on a large company (Google, Facebook, etc.), but not much choice you have either when riding that wave on their product.
It is hard being wholly dependent on a large company (Google, Facebook, etc.), but not much choice you have either when riding that wave on their product.
Lots of comments on here about whether it is good or bad to kick this particular company off the platform.
Regardless of if the overall decision is good or bad, how FB goes about it, including messaging and forewarning is something that there is no excuse to not get right.
Saying look at our ToS is absurd.
Regardless of if the overall decision is good or bad, how FB goes about it, including messaging and forewarning is something that there is no excuse to not get right.
Saying look at our ToS is absurd.
> Facebook had taken action against me, personally, that one assumes are reserved for the worst in our society — criminals, pedophiles and conspiracy theorists.
Lumping in conspiracy theorists with pedophiles? This guy is an ass, his business was probably barely legitimate, and I don't feel sorry for him in the slightest.
Lumping in conspiracy theorists with pedophiles? This guy is an ass, his business was probably barely legitimate, and I don't feel sorry for him in the slightest.
I'm surprised by all the comments blaming the author here. Even if their content is garbage, they made foolish business decisions, yadda yadda, Facebook's policy of banning business accounts and all associated personal accounts with no explanation or recourse should not be allowed legally.
"Facebook had taken action against me, personally, that one assumes are reserved for the worst in our society — criminals, pedophiles and conspiracy theorists."
Yah, it's those conspiracy theorists that are the worst in society.
Yah, it's those conspiracy theorists that are the worst in society.
Be happy they did, you can now build a better a world by stopping feeding facebook. Put your money somewhere else.
This won't be a popular comment but if your entire business model is based upon the existence of FB, you should have had a formal contract in place, as well as dedicated points of contact. I can't imagine that someone with millions in annual spend couldn't require this of FB.
IMHO FB ads a a pile of #@!
In my experience, a message sent to the appropiate FB group can outperform by a factor of 10 facebok ads. Not just clickthroughs, but also repeated visits after 2 weeks.
If you buy traffic from a specific country, they will send you from whenever else* while they charge you for geolocated traffic. Sad thing IP addresses are easy to geolocate this days and they miserably fail to do it.
I wonder how they work with stuff you cannot compare like similar audiences..
In my experience, a message sent to the appropiate FB group can outperform by a factor of 10 facebok ads. Not just clickthroughs, but also repeated visits after 2 weeks.
If you buy traffic from a specific country, they will send you from whenever else* while they charge you for geolocated traffic. Sad thing IP addresses are easy to geolocate this days and they miserably fail to do it.
I wonder how they work with stuff you cannot compare like similar audiences..
I hope you understand the fault lies completely in you.
Facebook is know to do or say whatever is needed to further their business. It not a new thing, it is a pattern of deception well documented here on HN.
By choosing to build your business on FB platform you should have understanding, that you are not really building your own business but rather you are building business for FB which lets you build business on their platform until such time they decide it is not worth it and kick you out.
You chose an ally that has no morals and you let yourself be completely dependent on their willingness to keep you.
Every business owner is responsible for thinking for themselves and investigating their partners. If this was your only partner, on which you were completely reliant for your business, it means you have catastrophically neglected your responsibility. Have you done your job you would realize that there is a risk and you would try to save or diversify in case the worst comes. Instead you were just focused on reaping benefits rather than thinking long term.
Pass the message to other people as widely as possible so that public is aware of how FB conducts business so that less people will face the same tragedy in the future.
Facebook is know to do or say whatever is needed to further their business. It not a new thing, it is a pattern of deception well documented here on HN.
By choosing to build your business on FB platform you should have understanding, that you are not really building your own business but rather you are building business for FB which lets you build business on their platform until such time they decide it is not worth it and kick you out.
You chose an ally that has no morals and you let yourself be completely dependent on their willingness to keep you.
Every business owner is responsible for thinking for themselves and investigating their partners. If this was your only partner, on which you were completely reliant for your business, it means you have catastrophically neglected your responsibility. Have you done your job you would realize that there is a risk and you would try to save or diversify in case the worst comes. Instead you were just focused on reaping benefits rather than thinking long term.
Pass the message to other people as widely as possible so that public is aware of how FB conducts business so that less people will face the same tragedy in the future.
Platforms like Facebook can be an avenue to a great revenue stream but we've seen time and time again they can be capricious, passive aggressive, and tone deaf. Some day all of this will catch up to them but in the meantime, being dependent on any one platform for your survival is like playing Russian Roulette with an automated gun.
Before anyone gets too impressed (though I may be too late judging by the chorus that has formed), it's $57M CAD, and over the course of 14 years, so roughly about $3.2M USD in spending per year, or roughly $266k USD per month. Fairly typical customer.
I wonder if this is an opportunity for business insurance.
I.e., being shunned by Facebook or Google is a high-consequence, low-probability, hard-to-predict event.
You may as well treat it like building a factory in an earthquake zone.
I.e., being shunned by Facebook or Google is a high-consequence, low-probability, hard-to-predict event.
You may as well treat it like building a factory in an earthquake zone.
Lots of comments here to the effect of "shame on you for letting yourself be so dependent on them", but the awful thing is that there are so many businesses whose unit economics _only_ make sense if they can buy visitors via Facebook. They are way, way cheaper for a lot of B2C businesses than any other ad network. I don't know why. Is it because people who are browsing FB/IG are bored and actively looking for ads to click on? Either way, it sucks that no one else offers the same access and CPM/CPC etc
Trying hard to empathise with company spending $57m on ads. Failing.
This probably had nothing to do with FB proper as is simply a form of state or corporate sponsored https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zersetzung
This guy or someone in his business or personal circle has caused problems for someone and they've leant on him.
Around 20% of all deplatforming originates with these covert coerce requests from states or big corporate
This guy or someone in his business or personal circle has caused problems for someone and they've leant on him.
Around 20% of all deplatforming originates with these covert coerce requests from states or big corporate
> If given the chance, I would go to great lengths to adjust my business, to right whatever wrong Facebook believes I have committed. I would change my business model, and shift the direction of my business to ensure I am fully compliant with Facebook’s policies. I have done it many times before. I would like to do it again.
15 years ago or so I happened to become a moderator on forum for script kiddies. I had been a temporal appointment for a month, because of another anecdotal funny story, but what I've found while being a moderator, that all those script kiddies trying to sell some stolen data were open for a discussion of their behaviour. In a good way open.
Before me (and by the way after me, and even with me) the forum was a mess. A great heap of kids trying to outcry others with their offers to find a buyer for their crap. There were strictly sounding rules, like "do not post into your forum topic (to get it on top of others) more than once per day", which were violated frequently. The approach of a moderator before me was to temporarily ban anyone he caught crossing the line.
I was the reason of my temporary assignment to this forum, and I tried to do the best I could. So I started to take notes, and I talked to people, explaining them what they did wrong, and what consequences they would face when I'll run out of time to talk with them. It worked like a charm, they were ready to conform to the rules, conditionally on the rules for everyone not just them. I used banning as a way to affect behaviour, but mostly short-term bans, no more than a day long, just to make sure they noticed me and to give them a feeling that they were punished enough and all their guilt is in the past redeemed and forgotten. (The guy before me could kind of dug up some half-a-year old violation and use it as an official reason for ban, while the real reason was violation of a pecking order, with him on the top).
I had learned a lot from that. From the other hand I have been never worked for 12+ hours a day for a month without days off. It was exhausting. If I had some tools for automation it would be easier, but I never got time to write the tools I needed.
I know that Facebook is a lot of orders of magnitude bigger then my problem was, so I'd likely be mistaken if tried to extrapolate, but nevertheless, my guess is Facebook have run out of resources to manage that mess and is trying to shrink it.
15 years ago or so I happened to become a moderator on forum for script kiddies. I had been a temporal appointment for a month, because of another anecdotal funny story, but what I've found while being a moderator, that all those script kiddies trying to sell some stolen data were open for a discussion of their behaviour. In a good way open.
Before me (and by the way after me, and even with me) the forum was a mess. A great heap of kids trying to outcry others with their offers to find a buyer for their crap. There were strictly sounding rules, like "do not post into your forum topic (to get it on top of others) more than once per day", which were violated frequently. The approach of a moderator before me was to temporarily ban anyone he caught crossing the line.
I was the reason of my temporary assignment to this forum, and I tried to do the best I could. So I started to take notes, and I talked to people, explaining them what they did wrong, and what consequences they would face when I'll run out of time to talk with them. It worked like a charm, they were ready to conform to the rules, conditionally on the rules for everyone not just them. I used banning as a way to affect behaviour, but mostly short-term bans, no more than a day long, just to make sure they noticed me and to give them a feeling that they were punished enough and all their guilt is in the past redeemed and forgotten. (The guy before me could kind of dug up some half-a-year old violation and use it as an official reason for ban, while the real reason was violation of a pecking order, with him on the top).
I had learned a lot from that. From the other hand I have been never worked for 12+ hours a day for a month without days off. It was exhausting. If I had some tools for automation it would be easier, but I never got time to write the tools I needed.
I know that Facebook is a lot of orders of magnitude bigger then my problem was, so I'd likely be mistaken if tried to extrapolate, but nevertheless, my guess is Facebook have run out of resources to manage that mess and is trying to shrink it.
I seriously hope these guys get their pages re-instated. Crazy that Facebook would ban their personal accounts as well. I wonder if they have decided that the concept of "sharing" something is redundant with Facebook's own features, so they decided to wipe it out. Shame on FB.
That said, I don't know of many "small businesses" that can pull $52m in ad spend, even if it's over 20 years ;)
That said, I don't know of many "small businesses" that can pull $52m in ad spend, even if it's over 20 years ;)
Shared.com is in the business of producing and distributing crap content. That's a subjective term, but it's like the supreme court ruling on pornography, you'll know it when you see it.
These guys most likely "skirt the line" to just operate as a mediocre and crappy content distribution network, that at scale, makes a lot of money because there is a certain subset of the population that will eat up any content at any quality level.
Facebook decided they don't want to be a part of this type of content distribution, and they made a conscious business decision to not to engage with it's owners and operators because it will simply result in an exercise of splitting hairs and a reduction to the ridiculous. They just aren't going to bring themselves down to the level... and I don't blame them.