Hello!

Arrrrghhhh.

Have just returned from a trip and found my entire FB page to be disabled and with it the attached fan page.

This is thousands and thousands of hours of work, love and everything else that goes into projects such as this.

I have tried every channel i can to contact FB and let them know how to contact me and try and restore my page but there is little or no help I can find.

If anyone knows of a way to achieve this PLEASE let me know, this is devastating, not only to me but the thousands of people out there who love Art Bitch and follow this every single day.

I feel terrible for them and need to resolve this ASAP.

Sadly,

AB

@andrea-vahl

This has been a monumental 8-month-several hour a day project massing over 8000 loyal, happy, dedicated followers (and growing), and over 4000 hours of my time (for free)….all gone.

All of my network, messages, links, everything.

I did not receive a warning, all this is pointing towards a massive, gaping hole in the FB system, as I created a personal page under my name in order to create the fan page and have since been stuck trying to migrate everyone over to the business page because of the new ‘subscription’ option FB introduced.

This means no one wants to like the page. They actively communicate with me through my personal page and like it this way.

Due to this, it has prolonged my personal page and once flagged, probably due to the name and not being an actual identity, they have closed everything without warning and left me no way of recovering this.

Beyond devastating and annoying.

Surely there is a way to contact FB, I have tried all of the none options on their help page and followed up the email they sent me, several times.

Nothing.

Surely there is more to FB than this, how do people deal with such things?

Surely there is something you can do?

AB

@arty  I’m soo sorry to hear that your page and profile have been disabled!

The only recourse that I know of are the two links below:

http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=pages_bug 

http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=page_disabled

Not that helpful I know…

I would suggest that while you try and track down any possibility of getting them back that you go ahead and start rebuilding. If you know some of your more avid fans you can enlist them to spread the word of your new url location.

If you aren’t currently using shortstack I would start now because then you would still have access to any tabs you created for your page.

It doesn’t sound like there is any easy way out of this…

Good luck, and keep us posted!
Jules

I empathize with ya @arty 

The Mom in Me to the frustrated You
Very very frustrating and you should get your rant on, kick the dirt and throw your fit. Then take a few deep breaths and surrender—let go–accept whatever the deal ends up being and start looking forward to building anew. Just think with all the experience that you now have how much better and smarter you’ll be able to do everything.

Probably not what you want to hear, but I couldn’t help myself.

Love to you, Jules

@arty
I don’t know if this is of any assistance butgo to Mari Smith’s page on facebook and message her. She works closely with facebook and she maybe able to help.
I know she has resource links on the left hand side of her page too.
I hope there is some recourse here. It’s an aweful lot of work and time you have invested.

@dcoville001, @rebeccacohen

I just wrote Mari an email will see how it goes.

I also wrote to ‘disabled@facebook.com’ to see how that goes.

That’s pretty much everything I can do for now. Unless you think of anything else, I will follow up also.

Thank you for your help.

If I get my pages back, never again will I only have 1 admin. Never.

Shish.

*)

AB

I seriously can’t wait for another competitor to enter the market against Facebook, make this easier for everybody/users and more democratic.

Google plus, whatever I don’t care anything but Facebook. Seriously this is a joke.

Blergh Facebook.

@pegsousa

Here, here. Yep.

Ridiculous to say the least.

Especially when you are bringing customers to FB and working with them.

Where to from here? Well I think I have identified a big fat gap in the FB market which needs to be addressed. The fact that they have opened up ‘subscriptions’ on FB, but not allowed for anything other than ‘personal profiles’ is a problem. I created the Art Bitch personal page to engage with and interact with an arty audience – this means talking to them through the message/invite/and other channels which, they prefer. I tried to migrate to the page but people just wouldn’t have it, especially since the whole subscription thing came in…I was stuck.

People would more readily subscribe (up to 50 per day) rather than like a page.

Now I am back to zero and I can’t even let me audience know.

All it would take it a propper warning system (which i never had), an actual feedback system, and perhaps a temporary re-in-statement for people i such situations in order to let everyone know what is happening instead of the hardline, total annihilation approach without recourse.

 Pretty simple really.

*)

AB

I’ve read that Facebook has one of the lowest customer satisfaction ratings…this is why…

@pegsousa @matthewoneill @annfurnivall

Thanks all, unfortunately all this talk does nothing really, nothing has changed and I am still stuck here in exactly the same position as I started and with no recourse…sigh.

Yes it is ironic, in the biggest – possible – way.

Now I have tried contacting FB through the ‘disabled’ email address above and have also contacted ‘Mari’ as suggested, both go nowhere. Mari even went so far as to reply through a generic template trying to push her own books  redirecting me to FB. My goodness.

No one is accountable, there are no come backs and no one is listening. They just want your business and don’t actually want to hear from you.

I set up Art Bitch to counter this very thing.

All of this is too much really. I was disabled while I was in transit last Thursday, almost one week, and have not received any reply from FB or anything suggesting otherwise. Have tried every single form and approach through FB now. Nothing.

Is this it?

All I can say is I can’t wait for competition to rock FB’s boat and actually make them look at their product and their consumers and try and make this better – for everyone.

I am in shock that companies can exist, have a market, engage with you and sell you things but don’t have any way of being contacted. Just amazes me.

*)

AB

@pegsousa

Thanks Peg!

Some great links here, didn’t know about Mashabe or InsideFacebook etc.

I like your ideas for the AB redux also, clever.

Thank you for your support.

I am still wondering what to do next, I mean if I should even bother with this profile, start again, do something different etc…I have created a new page under my personal name and started to edit the ‘info’ section accordingly for now while I am waiting for a response from FB. Which, may never come…how long to wait before re-launch myself and start over is the next question…

Here is the copy from the info section of the new page un-launched, what do you think>?

….

Ok so for all the lovers out there it seems that our last Art Bitch personal page (and attached fan page) were disabled by Facebook…

I know right.

But never fear, we are back and better than ever with our flashy new community page right > here.

And this page is here to stay – you can bet your boots on it.

So, post all of your links to both yours, and your friends, pages on the Art Bitch wall, and I will make sure I get around to liking them all (and also picking some out from time to time to share with our greater audience).

Go.

As you can see, I am having to start all over again… (and we were doing such a great job weren’t we) but am up to the task. I will work, and work, and work on this until the arty world is a better place…

*)

Phew.

Look forward to seeing your projects up there.

Oh and if you are not a fan of Facebook, there will be a web-page coming soon.

Let the wonderful thing that is creative exchange begin.

Yours,

AB

Art Bitch is also on Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and contactable at the following email address:

emailmesomethingartythen@gmail.com

Please forward all media releases, and or information relating to arts events and happenings, to the email address above.

And yes I also love getting messages telling me how super I am. All day every day. Love them.

https://twitter.com/#!/ArtBitchAust
http://anotherartbitchblog.tumblr.com/
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/art-bitch/45/a5/3ab

….

Spiel from our last (shut down) page.

Art Bitch is a social media platform dedicated to supporting artists from all over the world – in any discipline.

Interacting and engaging with an international audience of up to, and over, 8000 people daily (and growing), Art Bitch broadcasts arts and cultural content, shares artists projects and ideas, and generates discussion giving something back to the arts.

Art Bitch encourages open dialogue and cross-collaboration between artists and fellow creatives, and is a place for artists to share, and get involved.

Connecting people to projects.

Enjoy! And thank you for being a part of this – our art community.

AB

OK listen… did you add any other admin to the page?

If you did… the page is safe.

NOTE: If you own a page, try to add at least one other admin to it, in case this ever happens to you!

When it comes to getting a user revived from facebook, their general answer is “it cant be done”, however, I know that it can “technically” be done, but the prefer not to do it.  So, getting the user profile back may be near impossible…… but, getting the page back, is possible.  Usually, when they delete a page, they deactivate it (they dont delete it).

@vincentedwards 
that’s a nice piece of advice, thanks for sharing.

@abigailgorton Thank you!

@vincentedwards First part – No, as I mentioned, I was the only admin, otherwise we wouldn’t be having this conversation and I would be happy chappy. Second part – How s the question?

@pegsousa Thanks so much! This is good advice, I will start to file emails properly, so far all this has just been a bit of fun really, and yes I do some of their emails floating around but the whole email thing might take some time etc. Also I have to invite them (vi email) from a ‘personal page’ don’t I? I dunno but the whole Facebook page thing is very restrictive – part of the reason why I liked the personal page and kept it. Anyways…will investigate.

@juleswebb You’re sweet.

@chrissamichelle Thank you! I am in Australia, is there a special way to call this number from here perhaps?

*)

AB

@juleswebb @chrissamichelle

Yes please! Alternatively if you could forward me Jack’s Skype username I will request him.

*)

AB

It is unfortunate when things like this happen, but the facebook rules do clearly state that a personal profile must be in the same of an actual person.  Normally facebook do send a warning.   You can keep asking them to restate you, but you will need to have your personal page in your own name, and link that back to your business page.   Very very sad when this happens, but I try and tell clients all the time the risks they take building up a fan base through a personal page.   The rules are there to try and stop spamming as personal profiles are not designed for business.    As others have said Mari Smith may be able to help, but you need to be saying to facebook that you understand you have accidently broken the rules and that you will not commence another personal profile under anything other than your actual name.