By Update January 9th-10th, 2021: I have gotten 3 separate, credible reports now that this issue is happening again. This time however there has been no word from Facebook about it. The Facebook employee who was previously helping, Rob Leathern, has recently left the company. The closest person at FB who uses Twitter appears to be Jeff King, but he hasn’t been very active on Twitter recently. You can still try Tweeting him here: https://twitter.com/kingjeff2/
You can also try reaching out to Guy Rosen, VP of Communications at FB here: https://twitter.com/guyro
I will update this post when I know more.
Update: According to Rob Leathern (Product Manager at Facebook Ads) the issue has been resolved. If you still are having issues with your Facebook Ads account being disabled AND you received an email notice like the ones in this article, then I would recommend you reply to this Tweet from Rob.
As Facebook struggles to contain misinformation, half-truths, and outright lies about the ongoing vote counting across the USA, they appear to have gone too far and started banning innocent and unrelated Facebook Ads Accounts. This is likely due to some automation system they recently turned on or ramped up to keep the platform from being abused to spread misinformation or mislead any American voters. It might also be related to Facebook’s decision to ban all political advertising after the U.S. election.
The issue started around 5:45pm Central time on Thursday the 5th of November, 2020. We know because one of our ad accounts appears to be one of the first to have been hit with the suspension. That particular account had just requested to run an advertisement for an article about a chef who has been giving out free meals all year to those in need. As things like this normally go, I posted to Twitter and started finding others that did the same complaining about the suspension.
An hour later David Herrmann of Herrmann Digital posted a tweet about the sudden ad account suspensions asking anyone who got the sudden email notifying of the disabled account to retweet his message. By 10:45pm this evening it had nearly 150 retweets and quote tweets with the number of affected accounts seeming to grow as the evening wears on.
So far we’ve seen this issue impact a publisher, Facebook ads agency, tech startup, and local small business. Even musician Sarah Beth tweeted out that her Facebook Ads Account was disabled after trying to run an innocuous ad that mentioned the ongoing election.
When the suspension hits an account Facebook’s system is sending out one or two emails with the subject “Ad Account Disabled for Policy Violation”. One of the emails simply tells you that you violated “Facebook Ad Policies” in general and the second email claims that your account violated “Unacceptable Business Practices Policy”. To Facebook’s credit, the emails are simple, easy to understand, and informative about the suspension, even though they lack much aesthetic appeal and are quite frightening.
All ads in the account are immediately paused when an account is disabled like this, which is great news as it means you won’t be spending money while you’re unable to access your Ads account.
With the number of accounts that appear to be impacted, we believe this was not Facebook’s intention and are classifying the event as a bug. We believe that all or most of these suspensions will be lifted quickly. However, Facebook is notoriously bad at customer service (like all tech companies) and you shouldn’t expect a fast resolution or reversal of the suspension simply because this was clearly their fault.
To get out of the suspension we recommend following Facebook’s instructions in the email to “Request a Review of this ad account”.
The review will require your physical government issued identification and that’s about it. After submitting your i.d. card Facebook shows a message that claims there was suspicious activity on your account and you won’t be able to use it. That’s the exact same message they use when a personal account has been hacked or otherwise compromised (or suspected of it) and might frighten you if you have ever had to go through the login reset process. Fortunately it appears in this case they only mean the Facebook Ads account and the personal account remains usable as do all Pages and Groups that we’ve seen so far.
Facebook is a big company, why is this happening?
I think Bryant Garvin of Groove Life and all around FB Ads rockstar said it best. Just because Facebook is massive and full of really smart and talented people, doesn’t mean they can do everything perfect or foresee all the ways their systems might cause collateral damage.
What did I do to get suspended? Will I get reinstated?
As long as your ad was not election misinformation, fraud, or a scam you probably did nothing wrong. Go back through your most recent ads, especially any you created on November 5th, and check to see if any of them violated Facebook Ads policies. If none of them did, then you should be fine. Let me caution that we are not Facebook and while we have multiple contacts there we can not guarantee this bug will be fixed soon or that your account will get reinstated, nor can any other agency.
Full text of the email
Below is the full text (with account number and name removed) of the email Facebook sent out notifying Facebook Ads accounts that they violated a policy and therefore Facebook was disabling their account. The emails were sent on the evening of November 5th, 2020.
From: advertise-noreply@support.facebook.com
Subject: Ad Account Disabled for Policy Violation
Your ad account XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX and its ads were disabled
Hi [person],
It appears your ad account was used to create one or more ads that don’t comply with our Advertising Policies or other standards.
Our policies and standards help keep Facebook safe and welcoming for everyone. We use either technology or a review team to remove anything that doesn’t comply with our policies or standards as quickly as possible.
Your ad account was disabled for not complying with the following policies:
Unacceptable Business Practices Policy – We don’t allow ads that promote products, services, schemes or offers using deceptive or misleading practices, including those meant to mislead or scam people out of money or personal information (ex: products that boost Facebook or Instagram likes, etc.). Please read through our Policy for more details including a few examples of do’s and don’ts.
What You Can DoTake our e-learning Blueprint course Ad Policies for Content, Creative, and Targeting to better understand our Advertising Policies as a whole.
Request a Review of this ad account if you believe it shouldn’t be disabled. You can request a review until May 4, 2021. Please note that due to coronavirus (COVID-19) we have fewer people available for reviews and it may take several weeks to get a response.
Thanks,The Facebook Ads Team
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