The advent competitions are now in full swing and we’re entering the second phase of 12 Days Of Christmas style giveaways. However, some compers have hit a problem with their advent comping on Facebook. Loquax user Atomic20 posted on the forums yesterday that they’d received a temporary block from liking pages on Facebook. The block is for 30 days! That in itself is harsh but to add to the misery Facebook have also cleared their page likes from the last 30 days. At advent time that’s quite a loss! Other compers have had similar issues and because the way Facebook works there’s no chance for appeal. All you can do is ride out the block/ban until either the time is up or Facebook realises it’s latest “update” is acting a bit too draconian.
Where’s The Problem?
The problem lies in the fact that Facebook doesn’t understand competitions and how it’s platform is being used for comping. This is nothing new! A few years back Facebook only wanted competitions run via apps and that likes/shares shouldn’t be permitted. Now likes/shares/comments are run of the mill as entry mechanics and apps less used. Entrants don’t have to like pages to comment etc but promoters do prefer people to follow them as part of taking part in their giveaway. In other words it’s a bit of a mess!
Time For A Facebook Competition Option?
Resolving that mess isn’t easy. Facebook need to balance genuine spam activity versus compers who are active liking and following multiple promoters – especially at this time of year when there are loads of giveaways. Unfortunately as is FB’s spam formulas do mean there is collateral damage towards genuine users. Another approach would be to ban contests and giveaways on the social media platform. Personally I’d love that because it’d swing competitions back to the rest of the internet and make things a little more interesting. But that’s not going to happen! More sensibly would be if Facebook created a ‘competition’ or ‘contest’ post option – perhaps even their own version of Rafflecopter or Gleam? Those people interacting with competition posts could do so without worrying about being caught up in spam traps because FB would code it so that it’s not an issue.
Data Harvesting
As a positive for Zuckerberg and co. FB could harvest the data (they’d love that part) and utilise it with their advertisers. Fake competitions/contests could be easily reported – resulting in page closures if need be – and it could all be a lot more organised. Another advantage is that users of Facebook could opt-in or opt-out of seeing competition posts in their timelines. On ‘paper’ it sounds like a simple solution but for Facebook it’s perhaps too simple. At present it’s far better to chuck out bans and upset genuine users of their platform with their current approach.