Comments on: Facebook Contests – Are You Violating Terms of Service?

By: Joy

Joy — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 00:01:30 +0000

What about when running a promotion through an app but the contestants use a voting website to gain votes to win a contest? I was told this might be against Facebook rules….

By: Ahmed Ali Marvi

Ahmed Ali Marvi — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 22:01:15 +0000

How do we report a violation of Promotion Guidelines by a face book fan page to Facebook? I saw few pages which are seriously violating the guidelines, but could not find a link through which i can report to Facebook about the violation

By: John Wilkins

John Wilkins — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 16:18:21 +0000

I want to jump in with Hanna. One of the issues with the Terms of Service and Promotions Guidelines has to be the fact that Facebook seems to pay little heed to its own governance, ie there seems to be no way to report pages that violate such and therefore no repercussions for “cheating.” We spend heavily in creating apps and tools for proper adherence, but if Facebook doesn’t penalize those that break the rules, then we’re spending for naught.

Any ideas on how to effectively report such violations would be HUGE. You’d be our hero.

By: Hanna Kuoppala

Hanna Kuoppala — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 11:22:12 +0000

Hi Kaila,

We see these violations every day in Finland. Facebook is like a jungle and marketers mainly do as they want. Do you have any experience on how to get rid of those who don’t know or don’t want to follow rules? Facebook doesn’t seem to have any decent reporting tool for that and it would be rather childish to bust every “illegal” promotion we see.

It just makes me quite mad on the behalf of our customers who want to do things by the book.

By: Kaila Strong

Kaila Strong — Tue, 31 May 2011 23:44:58 +0000

Unfortunately, that does indeed violate. If the fans posted pictures in a custom made app then you’d be able to run this contest…but if you aren’t building a custom app where users can upload photos, I’d shy away from this tactic as it violates TOS.