Facebook's Surprise Suspension: Page Admins Beware of Being Locked Out Without Warning

Our mountos : institute has a hidden account on Facebook, used specifically to manage a Facebook fan page. The original purpose of creating this account was to avoid the risk of accidentally saying the wrong thing, being reported by trolls, and getting suspended, which would cause us to lose management rights over the fan page.

For safety reasons, we therefore did not use this account to post on public pages, and you could even say we hardly used it at all, relying solely on a tablet with the dedicated “Business Suite” app to manage the page. Ordinary people would never have a chance to know which account we used to manage the business account.

But yesterday I suddenly found that I could not log into the fan page, and my inbox received the following official letter from Facebook, with the same warning text also appearing on the FB page:

**

You still have 180 days to take action.* Hello XXX, Because your account or account activity violated our Community Standards, your Facebook account has been suspended.

If you believe we suspended your account by mistake, you can appeal our decision within 180 days. If you do not appeal within that period, your account will be permanently disabled.*

Email subject: Action required on your Facebook account

The most baffling thing to me is that although this account was not registered with a real name, it actually differed from my real name by only one character, using a nickname, and it was not some strange name either. Moreover, neither the account itself nor the fan page content had recently posted extreme remarks or inappropriate content, so why, among the many accounts I manage, was this particularly important one singled out for a surprise suspension?

More importantly, this time there was not even a warning, reminder, or reason for the suspension.

My own main account frequently posts provocative remarks, and being reported by others is a common occurrence, but the system always issues a warning about specific content, and after I appeal, the decision is always overturned (thanks to the great art of wordplay). This is the normal process of reporting, suspension, and restoration.

This surprise suspension, however, came with no warning signs at all and no notice of what I had done wrong. It simply said I had violated the “Community Standards” and directly locked the account.

They did not even let you explain. They only gave a button on the page telling us we could appeal the decision, and the appeal itself did not give you a chance to speak either. It was probably just a matter of Facebook internally having another person review the account.

There are only two possible guesses: surely it was not because someone could not touch my main account and went out of their way to report the small account? Otherwise, Facebook’s artificial intelligence system must have messed up again.

So let us look at the only reason the official notice gave that could count as a reason. In the Community Standards, Facebook mainly regulates such major categories as “Violence and Criminal Behavior,” “Safety,” “Objectionable Content,” “Integrity and Authenticity,” and “Respecting Intellectual Property.”

The problem is that, as I said at the beginning, this hidden account itself does not post publicly, so apart from “Integrity and Authenticity,” none of the other major categories could have been violated.

And the only thing about integrity and authenticity that could be brought up is the account name not being a legally registered real name, as mentioned earlier. But the name I used was actually no different from my real name, and unless it was a friend who knew me, it would be hard to accuse the name of being fake without evidence.

Even in such a baffling situation, however, we could only follow the official instructions and appeal the decision. As for what happens next, it seems we can only wait for the result of Facebook’s second review and then update everyone.

I would also like to remind all Facebook Pages here: when managing a business page, advertising account, or group as an administrator, you must always use two accounts. Otherwise, even if you do not post, you may very well be directly suspended by Facebook in a surprise move, just like today.