From the archive. First published in August 2016. Rewritten for clarity, with a note on what happened afterwards.
In 2016 we warned members about a wave of page removals and unpublishings. The specific wave passed. The question of what actually gets a page removed is permanent, and the answer has shifted in an important way.
What gets a page removed outright
- Clear Community Standards violations: harassment, hate speech, adult content, dangerous organisations, fraud.
- Impersonating a person or business without authorisation.
- Intellectual property complaints, which are handled by a dedicated process and taken seriously.
- Coordinated inauthentic behaviour, meaning networks of pages operating together to mislead.
- Sustained spam, including bulk identical posting across many pages.
What gets a page quietly throttled instead, which is far more common
- Engagement bait, demoted at page level for repeat use.
- Captions stuffed with keywords or hashtags, which restricts the account to followers only.
- Reposting other people’s content without adding something of your own.
- Clickbait headlines and links to ad heavy pages.
- Overly promotional giveaways and content classified as unwanted in the Recommendations Guidelines.
The distinction that matters
Removal is visible and appealable. Throttling is neither. Community Standards govern whether your page exists. The Recommendations Guidelines govern whether anyone who does not already follow you ever sees it, and since roughly a third of organic reach comes from recommendations, a guidelines problem costs a third of your distribution with no notification whatsoever.
Most page owners convinced they have been penalised have not been penalised at all. They have lost recommendation eligibility, usually through something mundane.
If your page is removed
File once through the correct route with your page and business portfolio IDs attached, and do not open parallel cases. The full procedure is in how pages get stolen and recovered.
Thinking of selling?
We give free valuations with no obligation. Send us the page URL and a representative replies with a figure, usually within one business day. Looking to buy instead? Register as a buyer.
