What’s Been Happening

As you may or may not already know, I’ve been experiencing ongoing issues with Facebook since the beginning of the year. Someone has been reporting all links back to my blog as offensive or malicious. This results in Facebook pulling all posts or blog updates that I’ve shared with my personal timeline or community page.

I only post my blog updates to my own page and timeline. People typically share it from there.

Unfortunately, Facebook also bans my blog URL https://www.theautismdad.com from Facebook completely.

This means that no one is able to Like or Share anything that originates from The Autism Dad blog. My only recourse is to appeal each and every report, and I do. Facebook will then put human eyes on each report, determine that I’ve not violated any rules whatsoever, and restore the posts that have been removed. My URL will then be unblocked as well.

I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve gone through this process, the most recent being April 3, 2018. Facebook always rules in my favor but I’m still waiting to have everything restored and it’s extremely frustrating.

How Does This Impact Me

To put things bluntly, this impacts me significantly. A huge source of daily traffic comes from Facebook. A huge part of my readership relies on Facebook updates to know when I’ve published something new. Reduced traffic impacts my ad revenue and income from other advertising deals that require me be able to share via Facebook.

My URL being banned also removes everyone’s ability to sign into my blog using Facebook.

Overall, this has seriously impacted my income and frankly, we’re a struggling Autism family, to begin with. It’s both frustrating and demoralizing to continually be the victim of someone’s ability to abuse the Facebook reporting system. I’ve thought about giving up and walking away but that’s not the answer.

How Do I Know It’s a Person Doing This?

Many of you have asked if this could be the result of Facebook’s new Fake News algorithm. While anything is possible, I highly doubt that’s the problem, and here’s why.

I’ve run an experiment to try and figure out if this is a person doing this or an algorithm. Here’s what I’ve found. My post’s only ever get reported when they are posted to my timeline or community page. I’ve been working with a company called BlogPros to help address the massive hit I’m taking because I keep getting cut off from Facebook. They pull my posts via RSS feed and then share them on Facebook, as well as a few other networks. Every post I publish gets shared on Facebook via BlogPros without a single issue. In fact, I can get hundreds of Facebook shares per post, providing I’m not the one who shared it.

This tells me that I’m not getting hit by an algorithm but rather a person who seeks to disrupt my efforts to both provide for my family and help other Autism families. The reason I know this is because this person only knows that I’ve posted something if I post it somewhere they have access to, like my timeline or community page. When someone else shares my post on Facebook, this person has no way of knowing, and therefore nothing gets reported.

I’m about 99% sure I know who this person is and they have been blocked. Unfortunately, they simply create a secondary account to circumvent the block and I can’t address that because I don’t know the new account. Facebook has been zero help in stopping this abuse of the reporting system and I have no way to protect myself. I simply have to wait until my appeal goes through and remember to no longer post anything on-page or timeline that links back to my blog.

Where Do I Go From Here

Once I get my account restored again, I simply must avoid posting anything that links back to my blog. Frankly, I need to avoid posting anything because even basic status updates are getting reported.

I’m now focusing more of my attention on Twitter and you can find me here if you’re interested in following me.

This whole thing is extremely frustrating because all I’m doing is providing support to families in need and trying to provide for my family at the same time. I get awards all the time for my efforts and impact on the community. I’m even Verified on bother Facebook and Twitter. I’m not doing anything wrong, and I can’t spam my own timeline.

Unfortunately, I’m going to have to devote less attention to Facebook and focus more on mediums that allow me to reach my audience.

Once Facebook restores my account, you will be able to share my stuff again. I ask that you please do so when you find something of mine that might help someone out there. Every Like and Share helps…

How Can You Help

You can help in a few ways. The biggest of which is to continue visiting my blog and sharing my content when and where you’re able. That helps me reach new readers and touch more lives. It also helps me provide for my own kids with Autism as well.

Here are a few other ways:

• You can follow this link to Facebook’s unblock request tool. Simply request that they unblock theautismdad.com. The more of these they receive, the faster I seem to get unblocked. I think it’s a squeaky wheel kinda thing.
• Follow me on Twitter by clicking here.
• Since traffic has been reduced due to this mess, my ability to support my family has been significantly impacted. You can help out in a big way by visiting some of my sponsors when you stop by. You don’t need to purchase anything. Just check them out if one of their ads interest you.
• Share my blog on other social media platforms you may use.

Thank you all so much for your continued support.

Rob Gorski