Facebook’s Animal Ban — What it means for all Facebook users
As the many animal communities search desperately for a reason for the Facebook ban on animal sales and services, some questions are getting answered, but not in a way that make any sense.
Many advocates of the animal sales ban have been claiming the “No Animals” rule has “been there all along”. My research, explained in a previous article, suggests that is anything but the truth.
So we look for answers to the multitude of questions this rule raises. But the answers only raise more questions.
Sitting way at the top of the list of potentially clarifying answers is this response to a question in the Facebook Business Help pages.
In it, a Facebook Help Team member seems to clarify, well almost clarify, three vital questions.
“Per our Commerce Policy, selling animals on the platform prohibited. Posts offering animals for sale or for “adoption” are in violation of our policy and will be taken down. If you see any ads, posts or groups promoting the sale or offer animals, please report them using the steps listed in this Help Center article: https://www.facebook.com/help/688521894518136/?ref=u2u
Once report, the posts will be reviewed by our Policy Team and may be removed.”
Does this policy affect ALL of Facebook, or just commercial?
Maybe, the answer says the policy is prohibited on the entire Facebook “platform”, which one might infer means both commercial and personal. The assumption being made by many is by “platform” Facebook means all of Facebook. However, “Platform” is a term Facebook itself uses to describe specifically third party Apps, such as games, login and payment apps. One could argue, though, that all of Facebook is an app, therefore a platform.
Facebook Platform — From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Facebook Platform is an umbrella term used to describe the set of services, tools, and products provided by the social networking service Facebook for third-party developers to create their own applications and services that access data in Facebook.[1] It was launched in 2010.[2] The platform offers a set of programming interfaces and tools which enable developers to integrate with the open “social graph” of personal relations and other things like songs, places, and Facebook pages. Applications on facebook.com, external websites, and devices are all allowed to access the graph.
Are Rescue Groups offering animals for adoption exempt from the animal sales ban?
No. He states posts for animals requiring “adoption” fees are also not allowed. Why the parenthesis? Is Facebook insinuating adoption fees are just another word for selling an animal? Is that targeted at legitimate animal rescues, or just people trying to get around the “for sale” rule?
Is this just about posts in Marketplace?
His reply states;
this ban affects ads, posts (does he infer all posts- personal feed, groups and pages?) and groups, not just limited to the posts in the groups but the groups themselves.
So, no. The ban goes beyond Marketplace.
The truth about the Facebook animal sales ban is:
- The rule is not a part of the Facebook terms of service, nor can it be found in any of the supporting documents linked to from the terms of service page. You have to follow a trail of links to get to it, and it’s is not where you would expect it to be. What is in their Terms of service is “we reserve the right to change the rules at anytime with no notice” style of disclaimer.
- No effort has been made by Facebook to inform users of this change to the Terms of Service nor update the Community Standards
- Facebook is actively enforcing a rule and punishing users while still neglecting to ensure users have knowledge of the rule in advance rather than be informed not knowing they where breaking the rules.
- The ban can be applied, at Facebook’s own discretion, to posts made by pages, posts in groups & personal posts.
- Users can be punished, groups removed, pages deleted, at Facebook’s own discretion, for breaking a rule they might have had no way of knowing existed, not even by reading the fine print in the terms of service.
As Facebook users, we agree to terms of service. Those terms include allowing Facebook to monetize our data in return for the “free” social networking platform. We pay for Facebook with our very existence, allowing them to track, monitor, record and sell every portion of our online presence. (Yes even off Facebook in many cases).
Some page owners have even ran paid promotions, approved by Facebook, only to have someone report their sponsored post and have Facebook delete their ad before the end of it’s term with no refund for the premium paid.
While Facebook states in those terms, that they retain the right to change the rules at any time, we should have the right to be notified and given the opportunity to decide at the time of the change, if we agree to them, we have the right to walk away from the Facebook platform before the changes go into effect.
Another issue arises from this situation.
Why, when Facebook so proudly releases statements about actions it has taken to provide a “socially responsible” platform, such as anti-hate measures and moves to ensure equality, has the animal ban been slipped in through the back door?
Well, that’s a whole ‘nother article….
