Have you encountered this pop-up message from Facebook before? “Warning! Your account could be disabled. You are using this feature to spam other users. Continued misuse of Facebook features will result in your account being disabled.”
If not, I congratulate you. You are still considered one of the million people who are abiding by the “Facebook Code of Conduct.”
If yes, I am sorry, you are being tagged as a SPAMMER by Facebook. This action has grave consequences like blocking you from adding friends or worse, terminating your account.
There are many forums on the internet with people complaining about these penalties. Most of them contacted Facebook and asked them why they are being banned. What they are doing wrong and how they can avoid this problem in the future. Sadly a large number of these inquiries have gone unanswered.
Get to know Facebook more…
Facebook uses a proprietary algorithm for determining unusual usage. The system automatically disables accounts whereas the reinstatement process is manual. Facebook states that…
the speed at which you are acting and the sheer number of actions you have made are both taken into account.” After a little bit of analysis it’s pretty easy to determine what methods are considered spam.
Here are the factors Facebook analyzes when classifying spam:
Number of Friends- Facebook has a way of weighing the amount of friends you have verses the number of messages you send out daily. It is understandable that you may send out 50 daily messages if you have 1000 friends on your account. However, if you are sending out 1000 messages and you only have 100 friends this may look like spam to Facebook.
Content Similarity- Browsing through different profiles and writing the exact same wall post on everybody’s wall raises a red flag! There’s a high possibility that Facebook will see this as spam activity. What you should do is be creative- switch up and tweak the content you are creating. Otherwise let’s be honest, you are acting like a spammer… right?
Average Message Usage- From the observations and studies that we did, we assume that Facebook also considers how active your Facebook inbox is. There is a big chance that Facebook also calculates the average message usage for each user. If you exceed or fall outside a certain deviation from the normal usage, you will be warned and possibly banned.
Time- Facebook keeps track of your time while using their services. A sudden surge in usage will set off Facebook’s alarms. An example might be, your account has not been touched for a couple of days, no messages, no wall post, nothing, then suddenly you are sending out 50 messages. Facebook may consider this as an unusual behavior or spamming.
Facebook Activity Factor (FAC)- All the information stated earlier and others that we don’t know of are pretty much added up and used to create an overall Facebook Activity Factor which is unique for each and every user. Falling outside this FAC will definitely get Facebook’s attention (in a bad way). You may receive a warning like the one displayed at the beginning of this article and if your behavior is not corrected, punishment will occur.
Some people are upset because of the Facebook Algorithm, but the bottom line is that Facebook has good intentions. They want their users to be happy while using Facebook’s features and minimize the annoying spam behavior. Facebook continues their battle against spam to bring a satisfactory service to all of their users.
