If you’ve ever had your social media account suspended, then you know it’s not funny.
Being completely cut off from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or YouTube is worse than it sounds.
You’re being cut off from your business contacts, becoming suddenly unreachable to friends and family members, and losing access to all the sites you signed up for using social media.
It’s even worse during this pandemic. As you quarantine and isolate yourself from your loved ones and friends, the only thing left between you and your sanity is your online community and the conversations you have online.
These are things that people take for granted. But wait until you make up one morning, only to find out that you’ve been completely locked out of your social media accounts.
What Social Media Suspension Means?
You’re going on your merry way, scaling up your ad spend, crushing your social media ads. And then one day, you try logging in to your Facebook or Twitter account, and then rats! The dreaded, red message of doom.
“Your Twitter Account has been suspended.”
Or
“Your Facebook account has been locked”
Your first reaction: total panic.
Well, we’re here to remind you not to fret.
With our little action steps below, it’s just a matter of time before you’re “all systems go” again.
What does Facebook Suspension Mean?
So, what exactly does a Facebook suspension translate to:
- If you’re suspended from Facebook, it means all your Facebook ads will be paused, regardless of their performance. It doesn’t matter if you’re crushing it. Once you’re suspended, the ads stop running almost immediately.
- You cannot analyse the historical performance of your Facebook ads.
- You cannot place new ads or change your payment methods.
- It’s then that you’ll come to find out that Facebook has no telephone support system.
What Does Twitter Suspension Mean?
When your Twitter account is suspended, that means you cannot log into the account and do anything.
You’re simply locked out of ever accessing your Twitter account.
That means:
-
You’ll Lose Your Twitter Earnings
Having millions of followers on Twitter means you’ll be receiving hundreds of earning opportunities from brands, corporate clients, and journalists in a day.
And losing such as account translates to losing a significant portion of your potential earnings and exposure.
-
You Need to Rebuild Your Audience
If Twitter refuses to reinstate your account, that means you’ll have to go back to where you started and build your audience afresh. You’ll be relying on your legacy followers to follow you again.
The truth: the majority of your previous followers won’t follow you again. So, you’re only likely to convince your most loyal fans.
-
Increased Risk of Being Banned from Other Social Media Platforms as Well
Twitter will set the precedence by banning your account and being adamant on reinstating it. Other social media accounts might soon pick on it and choose to follow suit.
You’ll be surprised to find out how well connected are these social media networks, thanks to the mighty power of AI. They can detect hateful speeches, languages, and abuse. Where they can’t use automation bots to do it, they have a manual moderation team on the ground that does the undercover work for them.
What Does a YouTube Channel Suspension Mean?
When YouTube suspends or terminates your account, it means you’re in big trouble.
There’s still hope, though. There are a few things you can do to get the account reinstated.
Let’s explain the stakes here.
YouTube doesn’t just suspend accounts. When they decide to suspend one, it means they found something so off about it that they couldn’t just issue a strike. They had to suspend the account.
There are dozens of reasons YouTube may decide to suspend your account. We’ll be covering that in the sections to come.
But here are the consequences you’ll have to bear once your YouTube account has been suspended:
- You might lose all the videos you have on your YouTube channel
- All accounts linked to that YouTube channel may also be suspended
- You’ll be barred from ever creating a YouTube account. You simply can’t set up another YouTube account.
It’s scary, we know.
Unless you’re guilty as charged, you can still get YouTube to lift the suspension.
Included in the suspension email that you receive from Google is a link for appealing. You can click on this link, and it will direct you to a page with more information as to why they suspended your account and the reasons to appeal for its reinstatement.
Don’t be quick to present your appeal. Remember: you only have one shot at this, and should you fail to convince YouTube, then you risk losing not just the account, but all your YouTube content.
Be sure to double-check the information you enter and make sure it’s correct.
In the explanation box, you want to maintain a polite tone. The point is to give YouTube a convincing reason for appealing the suspension.
After you’re done explaining the reason for the appeal, you can go ahead and hit the submit button. But keep your fingers crossed.
Pray.
There are two ways things could go:
Scenario One: Your Appeal is Approved
Now this calls for a celebration. But before that, you want to trawl your channel and find anything that YouTube flagged. Now go ahead and remove anything that doesn’t even remotely follow YouTube guidelines.
You can start by removing all the links from your description, changing sketchy thumbnail, and rewording the titles.
You escaped death by a whisker. Now do whatever you can to prevent the same thing from ever happening again.
Scenario Two: Your Appeal Didn’t Work.
This happens all the time, with thousands of YouTube users every day. It’s not over yet.
You still have one trick up your sleeve – turning to the news.
It’s a complicated process, but if you have a decent fanbase, then put them to work. Let them report the suspension and get YouTube to listen.
YouTube always listens to the news.
If you’ve done all this and still not managed to get your YouTube account reinstated, then count your losses and move on. You’re not getting your account back.
There’s still one glimmer of hope left though.
If you still want to continue making YouTube videos, then get someone you trust to open a channel for you, but with their details. You can host your videos on their channel, but pray that they don’t turn against you someday.
You also want to make sure that you’ve adhered to YouTube guidelines to the letter.
How to Avoid Getting Suspended or Terminated on YouTube
It’s disheartening when you’ve worked so hard to build up your channel only to wake up one morning to find it terminated – especially if it was terminated because someone maliciously reported it.
Here are a few steps to follow to avoid getting yourself in such a situation:
- Avoid Spamming: Whether it’s videos or comments, many people don’t like it when you spam them, and some of them may even rush to report you. If YouTube suspects you’re spamming, then they won’t hesitate to terminate or suspend your channel.
- Read their Terms: YouTube has strict terms and policies that they expect you to abide by. The least you could do is read and understand them, and make sure you’re violating any of them.
- Provide Your Actual Date of Birth When Signing Up: Google cannot sign you up if you’re below 13 years. They’re very strict about age, and if they discover that you lied about it when creating your account, then they won’t hesitate to terminate it.
- Use YouTube Reporting for Its Intended Purpose Only: Don’t abuse YouTube’s reporting by making unnecessary claims. You have to make sure it’s necessary before you can go ahead and report anything.
- Verify Your Account when Creating It: This is the only way YouTube can tell that you’re not a robot but a real human
- Avoid Uploading Videos that Fly Against Google’s Policies: Avoid posting videos that promote violence, nudity, and so on.
- Avoid Trolling Others: Google will suspend or terminate your account for trolling others. If a user reports you for trolling, you can be sure YouTube will take their side and terminate your account for that. In other words, you’re not to disturb other users’ peace.
- Block Anyone Who Disturbs Your Peace: Don’t hesitate to block trolls, and if they keep coming back, report them. If someone harasses you on YouTube, shut them off by blocking them immediately, and if they prove to be hard-headed and keep coming at you with new accounts, report them.
What to Do When Your Social Media Account is Suspended
Social media suspensions are not new. For what we know, they can happen to anyone.
But how do you react upon finding out that your social media account has been suspected?
Don’t panic. Stay calm.
We know how hard it is for you to relax, knowing very well that you might lose your account.
But there’s no hope in panicking. Instead of killing your peace, take a deep breath and start working on how to get the suspension lifted.
There’s a fair chance you might fix the problem quickly (within a few hours). But most of the time, you’ll be locked out of the account for a few days as the social media network tries to understand your situation.
We can start by looking at some of the reasons social media suspends accounts. After that, we’ll be dishing out a few pointers on how to get the suspension removed.
Why Was Your Social Media Account Suspended?
Social media is always listening. They have their eyes and ears all over, through automated bots and a team of watchful eyes to keep guard.
In particular, Twitter and Facebook are extremely careful to their users promoting violence and political content, especially for the US elections and campaigns.
Both Twitter and Facebook have permanently closed or suspended millions of accounts to this date.
Many of the suspensions issued have been based on covert or overt political activities and promotion of what can be considered as hate speech.
Your account might also be suspended on suspicion of being an underage user.
If your account is suspended for any of the reasons we’ve stated, there isn’t much you can do to get it reinstated.
However, your account might be suspended by mistake, and that’s what we’re here to help you out with.
For example, when you jokingly make a statement that appears to promote violence. Something like this:
“Post another picture of me, and I’ll kill you.”
This statement was said in jest. No one is planning to kill anyone. It’s a friendly joke that people use all the time, on a light note with no intention of ever hurting each other. But there have been so many reported cases of people whose accounts were suspended for including the words “I’ll kill you” in their posts.
Common Reasons for Social Media Suspensions
Reasons for social media suspensions abound. We can’t even list all of them, but how about we touch on the few common ones.
- Security Issue
The most common reason social media accounts are suspended is security. When social media suspects any unusual activity on your account, the most immediate action they take is to suspend it. This is their way of protecting your account from getting hacked or being compromised.
This is understandable. It’s to your best interest that social media networks would want to protect your private data and account.
Usually, this automatic response and lockout are triggered when someone enters an incorrect password so many times.
-
Aggressive Following
It’s easy to get a little carried away and send too many friend requests on Facebook or follow quite a considerable number of random Twitter users.
If you’re too aggressive in the manner at which you’re sending out these requests, your account might get blocked. They could even get your account permanently suspended if you’re not careful.
-
Dramatic Changes in Behaviour
Social media bots also look for dramatic changes in your account and behaviour. Are you acting a little bit too strange?
Or is your account showing irregular and unusual log-in locations?
-
Violating Their Legal Terms and Conditions
The only way to find out more about what might get your account suspended is to consider reading out their legal terms and policies.
Too bad people don’t like reading long pages of hard-to-understand policies and legal terms.
And unless you have done something wrong, then there’s no need to create a new account.
Instead, follow the steps we’ve highlighted below for each social media platform, and we promise you’ll regain your account in no time.
How to Get a Suspended Twitter Account Reinstated
No one is safe on these social media streets. You might wake up one morning and find your account suspended, without any warning or notice.
Twitter has an automated system that locks their accounts on suspicion of anything fishy or when you violate any of their legal terms and policies.
Keep in mind that Twitter never reveals the exact reason they suspended your account. They’ll just note that you violated their rules, without going to the specifics of what rule you violated.
Your Twitter account may also be suspended because of a security trigger.
Contacting Twitter is an option, but a frustrating one.
-
Using Reset Code to Change Your Twitter Password
In most cases, you’ll receive an email notifying you that your account has been suspended, with instructions on how to get it restored.
If it’s a security issue, all you have to do is reset your password, and your account will be up and running again in no time.
Just follow the instructions provided to reset your account. You can also reset it by asking Twitter to send you a reset code.
The reset code can either be sent to your phone number or email address. You’ll be asked to change your password, and that’s it.
You won’t lose your username, profile, or content. Your account should be unlocked immediately.
-
Filing an Appeal
If Twitter fails to reinstate your account even after changing your password, then that goes to show that the account was not suspended for security reasons.
The suspension was triggered by something else, and the only way to find out what happened is to file an appeal.
Here’s a form you can use to appeal a Twitter suspension or lock.
Bear in mind that Twitter might take days to respond to your appeal. But so long as you didn’t do anything wrong, the appeal should be successful.
4 Ways to Avoid Twitter Jail
- Don’t post the same tweet on multiple Twitter accounts. Twitter updated this policy in February 2018 in their developer blog.
- Follow all the 30 Twitter Rules. If you haven’t read Twitter rules, here’s your chance to do it before they crawl back to haunt you. Make it a habit to review them from time to time.
- Not all Twitter rules are in black and white. There are a lot of grey areas in some of the rules.
- Read the Best Practises of Using and Following Twitter: Twitter does monitor everything you do with your account. They do this to make sure you’re aggressively following all their best practices. For instance, they do not like it when you automatically unfollow or follow anyone.
- Go through their troubleshooting page: for any help and to find out more about Twitter suspensions.
More Tips on How Not to Get Your Twitter Account Suspended
These rules can be found on Twitter’s policy page.
They’re more of common-sense type of rules, but you’ll be surprised by the number of people that still break them.
- Impersonation: Impersonation flies against Twitter rules. You can get around it by creating a parody account, but it’s still against Twitter policies. So, tread carefully.
- Platform manipulation and Spamming: Any attempt to artificially suppress or amplify the flow of information on Twitter or to engage in behaviour that disrupts and manipulates the experiences of other users.
- Election Integrity: You’re not to use your Twitter account in a manner that suggests you’re interfering or manipulating elections. That includes sharing or posting content that misleads or interferes with voter turnout.
- Copyright and Trademark: Twitter will suspend your account for using other people’s intellectual properties without first asking for their permission. Be sure to check out their copyright policy and trademark policy page for more information on this.
Twitter 2020 Suspension Policy
Twitter recently added a ban evasion policy to their suspension policies. Any attempt to sign up on Twitter after your account has been suspended might get you permanently banned from ever using Twitter again.
What to Do After a Facebook Suspension
Facebook is the most rigid social media network to contact. They have no number, email, or contact form that you can use to contact them directly.
They only have a help page, with so many questions that you have to wade through before they can allow you to send them a message.
Immediately you find out that your Facebook account has been suspended, visit this page to learn more about the suspension.
Read the questions to understand why Facebook suspends accounts. After that, you want to click this link to appeal the suspension.
Using a polite and respectful tone, write to Facebook explaining why you think the suspension was a mistake. They’ll review your account and what triggered the suspension, and if you’re innocent as you claim, they’ll immediately reinstate it.
10 Secrets to avoid Facebook Suspension
Facebook will not hesitate to block or suspend your account if they find out that you’re spammy or not following their guidelines.
Follow the guidelines below to avoid Facebook jail:
-
Take breaks in Between Posts
Avoid making so many posts in a row. Learn to take a breather in between the posts to avoid coming off as a spammer.
-
Be Careless Tagging
Facebook doesn’t like it when you tag people in images and posts that they aren’t in. Avoid spamming people and only tag people when it’s relevant to them.
-
Never Add Anyone to a Facebook Group without First Asking for their Permission
Don’t add anyone to your Facebook group without first sending them an invitation or asking for their permission.
-
Never Post Googled Images
Facebook doesn’t like it when you use copyrighted or Googled images. You want to make sure the photos you post are from a reliable source, if not owned by you. Using Google images will only get Facebook to mark you as spam.
-
Use Your Business Name for Your Business Page, and not a Personal Name
Use your real name for your personal account and your business or company name for your business account. Don’t interchange or confuse the two. While at it, you want to use your personal account to keep up with your friends and families, and your business account for your business activities only.
-
Comment and Like at Normal Places
Don’t spam other users with comments and likes. Everything has to feel natural, genuine, and thoughtful – and not something you just returned for engagement sake.
Don’t go on commenting on everyone’s posts, every second. The last thing you want is to be mistaken for a spammer.
-
Only Friend Request the People You Know
Facebook doesn’t like it when you friend-request people you barely know. You have to make sure you’re sending a friend request to the people you know and have at one point had a personal interaction with them.
-
Be Aware of those with bad Intentions
The digital world is super-competitive, and it’s not like everyone wants to play it fair. Some of your competitors will try to sabotage your online credibility and images by reporting your posts without any justifiable reason.
The only way to prevent this from ever happening is to look out for trolls, and when you spot one, you block them immediately. It’s your job to make sure they don’t see your posts.
Also, try to pre-emptively report them. When someone attacks you for no reason, then that’s reason enough to report them. Just visit their profile and click on the three-dots button to report them.
Lastly, when such a thing happens, just contact Facebook and explain the whole situation. They should know what to do.
-
Shorten Links
Posting the same links to hundreds of posts and comments will only mark you as spam.
The only way to avoid this is to shorten the links you post on your Facebook page to save space and avoid being thrown into Facebook jail.
There are hundreds of link shortening sites out there that can help you out with this.
-
Avoid Using Bots and Automated Software
Excessive use of automated software is a direct ticket to being marked as spam.
We suggest you don’t use any automated program unless you have to – and only when you’re scheduling your posts.
And if you have to, continuously script for 4 to 5 hours, and give yourself a rest of about two hours before resuming everything. You’re doing all these to convince Facebook that you’re not a robot but a human.
What Should You do After You Find Out Your LinkedIn Account Has Been Suspended?
It’s disconcerting to have your LinkedIn account suspended.
That means you’ll be completely locked out of the account. You can’t log in, leave alone access their contact form.
Luckily for you, there’s a way around this.
Here’s a link to a generic contact form that you can access without necessarily logging into your LinkedIn account.
Alternatively, LinkedIn has an active Twitter account that you can also use to find help. From many of the users that contacted them through Twitter, their response was almost immediate.
On average, LinkedIn responds in about 30 minutes when contacted through Twitter.
So far, LinkedIn is the easiest platform to contact when you need help.
What to do When Your Pinterest Account Has Been Suspended?
There aren’t so many reported incidences of Pinterest suspending accounts.
But if it happens, they have one of the most straightforward procedures to present your case and remedy the suspension.
All you have to do is follow this link to contact Pinterest directly. However, you want to make sure you didn’t violate any of their legal terms and policies.
How to Avoid Pinterest Suspension
- Follow Pinterest Guidelines: Make sure you’ve followed Pinterest’s guidelines and policies to the letter.
- Invest in a Pinterest-related Course: Pinterest updates their course regularly. Signing up for one is an excellent way to stay updated on their latest development as well as rules and policies.
Here’s one Pinterest course you can enrol for today.
- No Need to Join Group Boards: Pinterest boards used to be a thing back then. But much has changed and they’re not much useful nowadays.
- Create a Business Account: If you plan to create a Pinterest account for your blog, website, or business, then simple logic demands that you open a business account (not a personal account). Opening it as a personal account only puts it at risk of getting suspended.
- Make Sure Your Content and Pins are Safe: Pinterest has clear safety guidelines. That means your images, heading, text, descriptions, and content needs to adhere to these guidelines to stay safe.
Obvious Pinterest Safety no-no’s That Might Get Your Account Suspended
Pinterest has serious rules warning you against the following:
-
- No porn, sexual exploitation, nudity, or anything related to that
- You shouldn’t post anything that glorifies violence. Pinterest has strong policies against violent images. That includes any image that incorporates fighting, someone holding a gun, or shooting.
- Pinterest will not hesitate to suspend your account should it turn out it’s promoting any use of illegal or regulated goods and substances, including tobacco, firearms, endangered species, alcohol, and so on.
Less Obvious Safety No-no’s that Might Get Your Pinterest Account Suspended
- Any Image or Post Relating to Self-harm, Mental Illness, and an Eating Disorder: It doesn’t matter how useful your information is. You want to stay away from any of these topics.
- Any Form of Drug Abuse: Pinterest will suspend your account should they suspect you’re abusing drugs. And not just illegal drugs, even medication drugs, and dieting pills. You want to steer clear of posting any form of drugs.
- Promoting False Cures: Pinterest is Concerned About People’s Health. Therefore, they don’t allow you to promote anything that appears to endanger their users’ lives. It doesn’t matter if you’re just sharing your personal experience. Pinterest will suspend your account should they find out that you’re promoting a false cure.
- Sharing your Personal Information on the Platform: You’re not to share your personal contact information on your timeline.
- Using Someone Else’s Image Without Their Permission: If you’re planning to use someone else’s image, then the least you could do is ask for their permission first. If not, you’re better of getting a stock image from the likes of Pixabay and Unsplash.
How to Contact Google when You Have a Problem with Your Account?
Google rarely suspends accounts.
But that’s not to say you’re completely safe from Google suspension.
And pray that it does not happen to you — because Google has one of the most complicated processes of contacting them.
You have to first head over to Google’s Contact page. Once you’re there, Google won’t just allow you to contact them directly.
They have tons of questions and choices that you’ll be required to wade through before finding their contact page.
It’s a long process that requires a lot of patience. But hopefully, you should be able to find their contact form and solve your issue.
How to Unlock Any Other Social Media Platform
As you can see, all social media platforms share a similar process of unlocking a suspended account.
All you have to do is locate their contact page and drop them a message explaining your situation.
Granted, some sites try to make the process simple enough, while others can be as frustrating as it comes.
But even with this, there’s always a way to contact any social media platform out there.
Top Social Media Platforms and Their Contact Page Link
Social Media Network | Contact Page Link |
| | https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/357439354283890 |
| | |
| |
| | https://help.pinterest.com/en/contact?current_page=about_you_page&appeals=account_suspension |
| | |
| | https://www.whatsapp.com/contact/?subject=messenger#:~:text=WhatsApp%20Messenger%20Support,our%20FAQs%20for%20additional%20information. |
| | |
| | https://help.instagram.com/contact/1652567838289083 |
