Several now-deleted threads on public Facebook discussion groups, including Is anybody else getting spam warnings? and Everytime I post something here I get a “WARNING” from facebook.com, discuss how Facebook’s automated filters mistake political speech for spam. When you trigger these automated filters, the system starts issuing repeated warning messages when you post or send messages or write on walls:

“Warning: Your account could be disabled: You are using this feature to spam other users”.

It’s really intimidating when this happens: once you trigger the warnings, you repeatedly get accused of spamming, even for clicking on a message in your Inbox. And as labor activists Derek and MiniMSFT, Hillary Clinton supporter Joanna, and Barack Obama supporters AJ, “deleted” (the now-anonymous deleted poster from one of the above thread) — and many] others (1, 2, 3) — have discovered, it’s not an idle threat: accounts are sometimes disabled, often with very little notice.

Facebook’s ‘Warning - Blocked from Using Feature’ page isn’t a lot of help. Basically, it

• establishes the power vectors: “Facebook has determined that you were using a feature at a rate that is likely to be abusive”
• lets you know you are in a Kafkaesque universe: “Unfortunately, Facebook cannot provide any specifics on the rate limits that we enforce. ”
• asserts omniscience: “Please know, however, that the speed at which you are acting and the sheer number of actions you have made are both taken into account”
• reminds you that have no rights: “The duration of the block varies depending on the nature of the offense, ranging from a few hours to a few days…. Facebook will not lift this block for you until the entire penalty time has elapsed”)
• and takes the opportunity to advertise:: “As a recommended alternative, we suggest you check out the Facebook Application Directory”.

Hopefully this page-in-progress will be somewhat more useful.

In practice, things aren’t anywhere near as grim as Facebook paints them. When you trigger a warning, there are some simple steps to that usually keep things from getting worse, and protect you in case they do. And even in the worst case, most of the people who have had their accounts disabled have had them reinstated. Read on for more.

• 1 Automated filters
  • 1.1 Making too many friends
  • 1.2 Posting the same text in multiple places
    • 1.2.1 Exact duplicates with links?
    • 1.2.2 Bumping?
    • 1.2.3 Cut-and-paste?
  • 1.3 Being “reported”
  • 1.4 Posting too many links?
• 2 What to do when you start getting warnings
  • 2.1 First things first
  • 2.2 Contact Facebook support
  • 2.3 Document it
  • 2.4 Wait, and experience chilling effects first-hand
  • 2.5 Hang out somewhere else for a while
• 3 What to do if your account gets deactivated
  • 3.1 Report it to Facebook support
  • 3.2 Try to find a real person to talk to at Facebook
  • 3.3 Find another online home
  • 3.4 Make some noise
  • 3.5 And … ?

Automated filters

The goal of the automated filters is to cut down the amount of spam Facebook users have to deal with — something we all appreciate the value of. Unfortunately, sometimes legitimate political speech looks like spam; and the filters don’t understand the difference.

Facebook has not disclosed much information about its filtering policies. This section collects what we know so far, based on Facebook’s policy statements, responses by Facebook support, and experiences of various activists.

13 reasons your Facebook account will be disabled has more information and discussion of this.