Facebook Banned Me For Doing Non-Profit Work Bro – Need Your Help Getting Friends Back…

So I got banned from Facebook on Tuesday May 19th for sending, what they deemed, “spam.” Here’s the back story:

I serve on the board of the local non-profit Sporty Girls, Inc. and the organization was having a fundraiser for its summer camp for African-American girls interested in non-traditional sports. Since there were only a few days until the event, I decided to send personal messages to each of the 180+ people on Facebook who indicated they were attending the event. Now I know from previous experience that I should change up the subject line/content of the messages to avoid triggering the automated spam filters, but my time was limited and I decided to risk it.

On Monday, I received a warning about spam so I stopped – immediately. Tuesday was an especially busy day, so I didn’t get the chance to respond to the daily deluge of messages (I had 1200 unread messages). That evening, roughly 24 hours after the warning, things finally slowed down enough for me to respond to messages. I sent a few generic responses (yeah, nah, call me, awesome, etc.), and then sent 5-6 messages about the fundraiser.

Then I clicked on the Home tab… Bam – Account Disabled. No warning.

Was I wrong? Yes. Did I break their Terms of Service? Yes. But here is where Facebook should have used some discretion.

I was able to locate the email address for appeals and fired off a 3 paragraph email on Wednesday evening explaining the nature of the messages, the mission of the non-profit, and my admitted guilt. No response.

I sent two follow up emails, and didn’t receive a response to either email.

With their 200 million users and new $10 billion valuation, I know Facebook could care less about me, but c’mon. I admitted my guilt and proved my intent was good. A simple 2 day or 1 week (at most) ban would have been sufficient. But a permanent ban? Really Facebook? I had over 2,800 friends, and it will be darn near impossible to find more than 80% of those people again. I may never talk to the remaining 20% again in my life. At minimum, they could have responded to my appeals.

Since this was all for a fundraiser, please consider donating a small amount to Sporty Girls at www.sportygirlsinc.org.

I’ve since started a new account, and I’m going throuugh the pain-staking process of trying to reconnect with friends. Oh yeah, they say my last name “Digital” isn’t real. How dare they?!

Update on 5/28/09 @ 10:57pm: My original Facebook account has been reactivated. Thanks for your concern. Add me as a friend here.

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