You can drive yourself nuts trying to comply with terms of service (TOS) guidelines on the various social media platforms, but in the end, you may find your posts removed anyways. In some freak situations you might wake up to find that your entire account has been deleted. This can happen to just about anyone. Whether you’re a lone influencer, a large company, or even a church! It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been on the app either. And even if you’ve spent truckloads of money on ad campaigns – it won’t amount to a hill of beans. You don’t get any deference. What’s worse yet, you may not have violated any TOS. So then why was your post removed? Why did you get an action block? Why are you suspended indefinitely.
These are all valid questions. The problem is there aren’t any FAQ’s that directly address your concerns. There’s no one who you can email or call. But what about when you report a post? Surely a human decides what stays and what goes, right? Well, we just don’t know. It’s all one big mystery.
Just look at the sizeable layoffs that took place when Elon Musk purchased Twitter. Has your Twitter experience been affected? Because I have to be 100% honest with you, that platform hasn’t skipped a beat for me. In fact, I like the new Twitter even more. You know, the Twitter that doesn’t ban people for unpopular opinions. Twitter is operating just fine without a huge number of humans. The fact is, human are being replaced by artificial intelligence (“AI”). Now before you go confusing me with the Unabomber or some other anti-technology type, let me just say that I have no issue with technological innovation. It’s not like AI has a mind of its own. Human beings programmed the bots and then never checked back on them again. It’s all about what’s convenient for the platform – not the user. At least that’s what it seems like to me. What’s it seem like to you?
Platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and Tiktok (just to name a few) know that people can’t do without them. Companies will also advertise – pretty much no matter what – because they have to. They may not like the complications and/or the stress, but if they want to remain financially solvent, they just have to deal with it.
Moreover, the apps continue to be FREE and when something’s free, you can’t really complain much. And given that social media platforms are perpetually trying to flesh out the top tier influencers from the pack they’ll keep changing the algorithms. They’ll limit how many people you can follow, how many posts you can publish, and how many posts you can like. They watch the frequency with which you DM and the frequency with which you respond to DM’s. They calculate how many people you move from your primary inbox to your general one and even how many you send to spam folder. They look at it all. Even when you’re not actively using the app, they monitor that too.
As frustrating and ass-backwards as many of these post pulldowns may be, you just have to keep going. You can appeal the decision and expect to either win it or never hear about it again. If you get put in time-out for something you didn’t do, just go to another app for 12-48 hours. The key nowadays (and has been forever for me) is to be active on a number of social media platforms. If one’s messing with you, then go to your fallbacks. Also have backup accounts on all platforms – JUST IN CASE!!
Good luck! (You’ll need it).
