I wanted to write a quick post to hopefully help people who:
- Can’t post links to their website on Facebook or Instagram because it “violates their community standards,” and
- Have been wondering how to contact Facebook support for this reason or any other.
One thing before I start, though.
I don’t want to waste your time. The coming solution involves having a Facebook page and running ads. I have no idea how to contact support ordinarily and only managed it with these two things in place.
If those factors apply to you, though, the following steps may help.
The Background
This issue has been going on for the last three years or so. Possibly longer.
Every time I tried to post a link on Facebook to my latest blog post, for example, a notification would pop up that flagged my website as violating their community standards.
It seemed ridiculous, but there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t link to the site.
It even happened when I tried running ads to it on Facebook – it literally wouldn’t take my money because it stopped me from linking to What’s Danny Doing. I couldn’t send messages on Facebook with links to the site either. It was a site-wide block that extended to Instagram.
It’s been unbelievably frustrating.
However, it hasn’t been an urgent issue because social media was never a big part of how I’ve grown the site…Until recently.
After Google’s latest update, I’ve needed to find new ways to get my content in front of people.
Enter social media, and why being unable to promote What’s Danny Doing on Facebook or IG has been so irritating (and detrimental).
I’ve wasted countless hours trying to find a solution but hit a dead end every time. Facebook Support just didn’t seem like a thing. I’d go to the Help Centre, spend ages clicking around and going down rabbit holes, but get nowhere.
Sound familiar?
I’ve read articles online about other people in this position who found a way around it. One recommendation was to start running ads on Meta. If I remember correctly, they said this would open a door to contacting a support person.
It didn’t work for me when I tried.
As I mentioned earlier, I couldn’t set up an ad for the site because I couldn’t link to it. So I gave up.
In reality, I should have thought harder about it. Just because I couldn’t post an ad to my site, didn’t mean I couldn’t run ads altogether.
And that might explain why I may have just found a solution.
Website Blocked by Facebook: A Potential Solution?
In January, I set up another Facebook page for a different website.
I wanted to grow it, so decided to run ads to get “Likes” for the page.
In the meantime, I’d basically lost hope for What’s Danny Doing’s Facebook page. I’d set up a Linktree account and paid for a subscription where you can redirect links.
By setting a redirected link to the What’s Danny Doing homepage, I had at least found a way to include a link to my site on Facebook and Instagram.
It wasn’t ideal – you can only have one redirected link at a time, so I still couldn’t promote new blog posts (because I’d have needed another redirected link each time on Linktree). Either way, this is a decent workaround for the issue if you’re stuck.
I’ve been running ads on this new Facebook page practically ever since the end of January – so almost three months at the time of writing.
Today, I decided to cross-post something from my new Facebook page to my What’s Danny Doing Facebook page – with a link to the site.
I’d forgotten that it wouldn’t work. And it didn’t.
So I got annoyed, again, and decided to try once more to find a solution.
And guess what…I found a way to contact support. It was convoluted and took multiple attempts at clicking buttons to get to the right place.
But hey, within a few moments I was messaging someone called Myles. Here’s what I did.
How to Contact Facebook Support (Based on My Experience)
First, I can’t promise this will work for you. Heck, I had no expectation of it working for me.
It just happened, and I’m not entirely sure why. But here we are, so I thought I’d share the process.
Remember, leading up to this, I’d been running Facebook ads for months.
Maybe Facebook/Meta has made system-wide changes between now and when I last tried to contact their support team. But I assume those ads had a big role to play in this.
Step 1: Try to Post and Fail
As per, I try to post (I’m on desktop, not mobile) and it doesn’t go through.
Step 2: Click on Meta Business Suite
In the Manage Page panel on the left, I click Meta Business Suite on the bottom left.
Step 3: Hit “Help” in the bottom left, then click “Go to Business Manager.”
Step 4: In Business Manager, click “Help” in the bottom left
When I click “Help,” this panel on the right-hand side opens. I scroll down on it and there’s an option to “Contact support.” I start getting excited.
Step 5: Click “Contact support.”
After I click it, I see a list of options. I spend ages trying different ones out and going through the pages that follow to no avail. Eventually, I find one that gets the result I want…
Step 6: Click “Disabled or restricted asset.”
When I click this option, it shows my Ad Account.
Step 7: Click your ad account
When I click the ad account, I have an option to create a new case. This will look different for you. I already have a case open trying to solve my own problem. Honestly, I can’t remember what it said before. But you should click whatever the most likely options appears to be!
Step 8: Click “New case”
When I hit “New case,” the next page shows a long list of information that I completely ignored. I’m sorry if it’s important. Instead, I saw the option to “contact support” at the bottom and hit that straight away.
Step 9: Submit your message and wait for the chat to start.
I see the option to chat, call, or email. I chat. I don’t even explain everything in my initial message. I’m so skeptical of it working that I enter a single letter and see what happens. Within a few moments, Myles is messaging me back.
Step 10: Explain your issue.
You can then message Facebook Support as you normally do in Facebook Messenger. You chat right there on that screen or go to Messenger on your Facebook profile. Nicely, you end up with a record of the conversation in Messenger.
Myles asked me for screenshots of the problem re posting links to my site.
Ultimately, I’m still waiting to see if this will work. I just decided to post this while it’s fresh in my memory.
Anyway, after explaining the issue, Myles sent me to a support/debugging page where I could file an appeal. Interestingly, I’ve done this before – it’s readily accessible when searching for a solution to violating Facebook’s community standards.
Just hit this link, then click “let us know.” You can then submit a message with the problem.
When I did this in the past, I didn’t hear anything back, and the problem continued.
The difference this time (I hope) is that Myles said he’d also escalated the matter to the internal team for review. He also advised me to include in that appeal a specific reference number for the case/conversation we were having.
When that was done, he directed me to the “Support Inbox” under “help & support.”
On desktop, you go to your Facebook profile -> click your profile pic in the top right -> hit “Help & support” -> Support Inbox.
Apparently, when the team has reviewed the matter (which can take a few days), I’ll get an email here detailing the outcome.
I Hope this Helps You Contact Facebook Customer Service Too
So, who knows? In a few days, this whole debacle might be over, and I’ll be able to start posting links to my site on Facebook and IG again!
If nothing else, though, at least I know how to contact Facebook support…
I hope it helps you do the same. Any questions, feel free to drop a comment below, and I’ll try to answer them as best I can.
Update on the Situation: Good News
It’s been a few days since I first went through this process and posted this article about it.
And the good news is that it seems to have worked! Today, for the first time in years, I was able to post a link to my website on Facebook and Instagram.
Within a day or so of talking to Facebook customer service, there was an update in my “Support inbox.” There was one alert about a post I’d made in a Facebook group in June 2023. That post had been flagged as spam, which I only realized last November when I was looking into all of this. At the time, I found a way to appeal that decision.
Anyway, the alert was basically a response to that appeal. The notification said they’d reviewed the post and apologized for making a mistake – it didn’t go against their community guidelines as they’d said it did at first.
So, I went ahead and tried posting something with a link to What’s Danny Doing on the Facebook page. Lo and behold, it worked.
Honestly, I didn’t really know what to expect after speaking to support. But this wasn’t it!
Reviewing one failed group post from June 2023 corrected a Facebook-wide issue that’s been ongoing for years? For as long as I can remember, I haven’t been able to send links to the site on Messenger, connect it to Instagram, or post links to it anywhere on Facebook. Yet they only highlighted that one post in the Support Inbox.
I’m assuming two things:
- Appealing the decision to mark that June 2023 post as Spam was important. Maybe it got logged in the system somewhere, waiting to be reviewed, but pushed to the back of an endless list of other people in similar positions.
- Speaking to customer support bumped my name up the list (Myles said he referred my case for review to the internal team), and overturning the decision for that June 2023 post was the simplest way to unblock my account.
If I hadn’t lodged the appeal, who knows how this would have played out? And, heck, I’d totally forgotten going it, to the point I’m hoping I’m not making it up now.
Regardless, I suppose this offers some sort of framework for how to solve this problem.
- Look in your support inbox to see if you have any alerts. I have a feeling this is where I first saw my post had been flagged as spam, which set me on the path to appealing it.
- Appeal the decision.
- Try contacting support.
- If you don’t have that option, start running ads for a Facebook page you own.
- Wait a while, then try to contact them again.
Sorry this isn’t a quick or easy fix. And apologies in advance if this doesn’t work. But good luck! I know how frustrating this is, so I wish you all the best with it.
