A funny thing happened on the way to my Facebook page

CREATED BY STEFFI LEWIS Published: 03/10/2025 @ 09:00AM #facebook #suspension #artificialintelligence #AIfilter #irony

Well, I guess it had to happen eventually. I had my Facebook account suspended. The irony of this was that it was an AI filter that caused it! You all know that I love artificial intelligence, but I was a bit miffed ...

Computer says no, Facebook denied, appeal began!

I share a lot of stuff on Facebook and LinkedIn. Mostly blog post shares, but general marketing social media stuff on occasion, too. These are composed of a message and an image and are sent to one of the numerous pages I manage for my blogging subscribers.

But the other day, I fell foul of the Facebook content guidelines!

I have a sharing queue on my servers, which means I can stack up all the shares for the day earlier on, and they are sent out to schedule when I request them. This particular share was an image of a pile of receipts on an office desk, as my client is a bookkeeping trainer, and she was discussing the panic of reaching the end of the month and falling behind on accounts.

Doesn't sound particularly threatening in any way, does it? The image was AI-generated, and none of the text on the receipts was legible, except for the word 'RECEIPT' at the top of each one.

The share was sent around 11am, and, as if by magic, my blog subscribers' page was suspended first, and a few minutes later, so was my own Facebook account. This was a massive surprise, considering I've had a Facebook account for over 15 years now and have never once infringed any content guidelines with anything I have posted.

Apparently, an AI content filter took one look at the image and decided (I can only guess), I was phishing for credit card details or some other dodgy financial scam, and suspended the page and booted me off Facebook.

I don't get angry with things I have no control
over, but I was a bit miffed!

The problem with Facebook is that there's no way to talk to a human being. AI had decided I was dodgy and thrown me off. I immediately appealed (of course, I would), but with so many users and so few content moderators, it would take at least 24 hours to decide if I would be allowed back on or not.

The problem is that it wasn't just my Facebook profile with 15 years of photos and most of my other memories, but (and I think this is actually more important) my developer account. I have an app that connects sBlogIt! blogs to Facebook pages, and it was a complete pain in the bum to make that work, thanks to a lack of documentation. I really didn't want to lose it.

Anyway, they let me back in eventually!

After 24 hours, I received a notification that they believed I wasn't some dodgy crim and I was allowed back onto Facebook. I had to reactivate The New Stefferati Facebook page again and was relieved to see my blog subscribers' own page had come back, but both had that image removed, though the share itself was still there.

I was also very pleased when my app sent queued shares on schedule, and they appeared on the correct Facebook pages again.

What have I learned from this experience? Um, that Facebook is relying more and more on AI and reducing its content moderation teams to supervisors who respond only to appeals? I mean, seriously, that image shouldn't have caused a booting, but it did because there was no human in the loop to review what the AI filter flagged up immediately.

And LinkedIn happily published the share, including both the message and the image.

Funny old world, hey?

Love, light & logic ...

STEFFI LEWIS
Independent UK SaaS Developer - Creator of YourPCM & sBlogIt!

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About Steffi Lewis ...
Based in the charming village of Hanslope in Buckinghamshire, UK, I bring over 30 years of experience in web development. From creating my first website for the Open University in 1993, through being part of the dot com boom, to my explorations in SaaS and AI over the last few years, my journey has been a rich tapestry of web projects, big and small, both funded and bootstrapped. Originally developed during the pandemic, at the start of 2025, I released the next iteration of YourPCM, version 2, which is all about 'Easy Contact Management for Small Business Owners'. Is it a CRM? Yes, but I don't call it that because people glaze over at the mention of such things. CRMs are boring, difficult to get to grips with, and it's a nightmare to get help when you need it.  YourPCM is none of those things! It's simple to use, well-supported, feature rich and beautiful, right out of the box. It's available on a simple monthly subscription with no long-term tie-in. Book a demo or grab your own 14-working-day free trial and discover why YourPCM is all about easy contact management for small business owners.  My head is in the cloud, my heart belongs to the web, and my soul is filled with such beautiful code 💗

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