As a security precaution you are not allowed to remove or demote a manager for a week after being added as a manager.

Facebook fanpages have been introduced to a new security feature, which at first sounded annoying, but it’s actually quite great. The new Facebook fanpage update prevents new admins from removing current admins for a whole week. That is right, no more malicious admins, no more stolen pages. If you happen to let in an admin, you now have seven full days to evaluate him, and you don’t have to worry about being removed from the position yourself.

Trying to remove the current Admin will initiate a popup with the following text:

As a security precaution you are not allowed to remove or demote a manager for a week after being added as a manager.

Now this feature is still in its infancy, or Facebook coders are a little sloppy, as during testing we found out that new admins could simply demote the current admin to an editor, after which we could completely remove him. So as you see, this feature has some major holes, and wasn’t really planned thoroughly. The popup clearly states that new admins are not allowed to demote, yet 3 out of 3 times we tried we were able to do so. A fluke? Maybe. Regardless, we’re pretty sure this will get patched up in no time, so all you scammers who prey on poor admins to steal their pages better beware, you will no longer be able to do so.

UPDATE 08/05/2015

While the method mentioned above no longer works, the system is still buggy. On average 3 out of 10 Facebook fanpages still don’t have this security measure implemented, or Facebook has a bug in their code. We deal with fanpages almost daily, so we transfer ownership quite frequently. There is no way to tell if the feature works until you try. We were able to remove current admins without any problems (on 30% of the pages) without the seven day wait. We have also heard reports that this security feature is disabled in the basic mobile version of facebook, but we have not tested this theory. You can try by using http://mbasic.facebook.com

UPDATE 20/10/2016

The mobile version has been updated, so new admins will not be able to remove you via the basic Facebook version. Even though the system has been fully patched we are still seeing bugs from time to time, so be careful on who you make admin!

Stay safe out there!