You are on 'social media' platforms, to share your life, your business, your point of view about whatever is important to you, with those in your social network. But to those platforms, all you have to share is a product for sale to advertisers. But what happens when the product is not what the platforms want? What if they don't like it?
Maybe you will have to pay, so what you have to share with your network is allowed to be seen to those in your network? We did try that, just today. We tried to promote one of our posts on Facebook, where we were sharing our crowdfunding campaign. Here is what we got after we hit the 'Publish' button:
What are those Unacceptable Business Practices (https://www.facebook.com/policies_center/ads/prohibited_content/unacceptable_business_practices) we didn't comply with? Here is the list of things you are not allowed to advertise on Facebook:
Ads promoting background checks that claim to sell access to personal information - Not only we do not sell access to personal information, but we are strongly against any such activity. This is easy to get both on our website, and our campaign page
Ads that promote products or services that claim to boost Facebook or Instagram likes or followers - Actually, ScreenTag is a tool to break its users free from all 'social media' platforms, including Facebook and Instagram
Ads that promote schemes or services that claim to guarantee a visa without any requirements - Nowhere near that. ScreenTag is a global service that does not interfere with visas or passports, or any requirements for such documents.
Ads that feature a picture of a public figure to mislead users into buying a scam product - First, who wants to mess up with public figures? Does Facebook have any idea the fees they would ask to be paid for using their picture without their consent? Second, a scam product would never be advertised by a legit business, risking millions in fines.
Then, maybe it was the last one:
Ads that promote entirely free-to-play sweepstakes apps offering payouts of real money or something of monetary value - Sweepstakes? Do we look like a sweepstakes app?
So, none of those rules was violated. The only violation we did, was to try to run an ad, exposing those platforms to their users. And Facebook didn't like that. So, rather than entirely closing our profile, they did the second best thing: they blocked our post from been shown to anyone's feed. And when we tried to force them to show this post to our network, by running an ad, they did the next best thing: they disabled our ad account.
Facebook, and the rest of the so called 'social media' platforms, not only control who you are sharing your content with, but they also control what your content should look like. They are the 21st century version of George Orwell's '1984'. It has happened to us, and it has happened to thousands others. Sooner or later, it will happen to you too.
You need to break free! Now, you have a choice!
