Protect Yourself From Facebook Deletion

There has been a lot of deleting going around lately.... so I wanted to brainstorm some ideas to protect myself and others. Please feel free to add your own ideas!

• Know who your friends are. I'm guilty of it... we all are.... befriending high school classmates from 20 years ago that we essentially know nothing about now, accepting the friend request of random internet stranger who is a fan of similar pages as us, or requesting the friendship of someone whose comment you liked on a fan page. It all seems harmless... but really, safety issues aside... these could be the people reporting your photos and getting your accounts locked.
• A friend or family member ever make a negative comment about breastfeeding to you? Perhaps blocking them from seeing your photos and/or statuses regarding breastfeeding might be a good idea. Check out the 'account' and 'privacy settings' area on the upper right hand part of the screen - you can set up to specifically "hide" certain photos and statuses from them. If they have been rude about it... obviously they don't want to hear or see the information. Some people just can't be normalized.
• The obvious 'don't post photos' route could always work. I don't know that anyone has been deleted just from words they've used. I think SEEING it is a real hot button issue for some people.
• Make sure you have the privacy setting on your photos so that no one other than those people on your friend list can see the photos. There is a "friends only" and a "friends of friends" option, choose wisely.
• If you admin a breastfeeding support group on FB, it might be a good idea to activate a dummy account or make your spouse be an admin - because if you are deleted you may loose access to your group since there will be no admin left to fix the situation. Make sure it is someone you know. Woman Uncensored page is dormant because whoever the other admin is (come on Jess - where are you??) hasn't stepped forward yet and Rach was deleted. Learn from their mistake! [EDIT: Jess has been found and WU has her page back!!] Never be the only admin to the page... it could end sadly.
• If you are a fan of a breastfeeding support group... as much as we all love boobs... be sensible about the fan photos you post. Avoid posting photos in public forums that have an exposed nipple. These are completely public, and often are the photos that get reported and in turn could get the whole site shut down. It's sad... but true. Stick with photos that have a latched on baby (of course some breast and areola will show, but full on nipple exposure is likely to offend more people and get more reports/flags sent to FB)

Why We Shouldn't Blame Facebook...

...we need to blame our 'peers.' Facebook does not have vast amounts (or any) staff sitting around in cubicles in storage space D scouring their social networking site looking for breastfeeding photos. Photos, links, pages and posts are 'reported' as being obscene by folks just like you and me (only they are a little wrong in the head in a bad way).

From what I understand, when a certain photo/link/post/page receives enough reported hits there is an auto-system that just deletes said item and sends out an informative (sarcastic) email to the owner. The item is then 'gone' without any discussion.

When contacting Facebook for restoration I haven't heard of anyone not being able to get their page back (well, except the original Woman Uncensored personal account that was attached to her fan page that now sits locked and dormant :( WAAAAH!). Guggie Daly, Emma Kwasnica, and many others who have been deleted now have their accounts back due to support and persistence.

Maybe instead of saying that Facebook hates breastfeeding, perhaps we should encourage them to update their system so that there is some communication before something is deleted.

So, as much as we'd love to attack and blame Facebook... it just might not necessarily be their fault. Respond professionally and respectfully when helping these pages and people get restored. We want Facebook on our side after all... because it is our drug of choice and we don't want to peeve off the dealer. :P

Here are details on how you can help with the latest deleted page, The Leaky B@@B

http://leakyboob.blogspot.com/2011/01/why-tlb-on-facebook-and-what-you-can-do.html