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Having said that, if they don’t have the capacity to review all content, I don’t think automatic banning is the appropriate solution.

Exactly. I get that they have tons and tons of users, so it makes sense if they can’t physically review everything, but banning someone on a second offense that wasn’t even really a violation doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. I think they really need to get a better system in place, otherwise it can become an incredible headache for users who haven’t actually done anything wrong.

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There are TONS of pole dancers on Facebook. It’s not like I’m the only one.

Considering the way Facebook handled my situation, I really don’t think they actually review anything. They just either disable your account or kick you off if someone complains about you, regardless of whether it’s legit or not. Which kind of defeats the whole purpose of having rules and guidelines in the first place, honestly.

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God, why do these people think the female body is inherently pornographic or lewd whenever it is displayed??? https://www.studioveena.com/img/smilies/icon_thumbdown.gif

Exactly! I feel like I uploaded pornographic shots of me totally naked with my legs spread and all my bits hanging out from the way they are handling it. I guess because I am a woman and there was a pole involved, it is automatically lewd even though there was no nudity (no stripper shoes even) involved. It’s not at all about being, I don’t know, a strong athlete who has worked hard to get where they are? Sex is easy; hanging upside down from a pole by just your legs? Not so much. If pole dancing was all about the sex, a lot more people could do it.

This really just ticks me off, not just that someone would report a picture like that (because I know people like that are out there,) but that Facebook handled it in such a way. De-activate my account without even telling me why, take a week to get back to me only to let me know that I have photographic content on my page that is in violation of their policy, re-activate my account and then take it down again a day and a half later? Then take an additional two weeks and a couple of e-mail requests to respond to me, and just completely ban me from the site?!

I guess my body in a bathing suit is just that offensive.

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So an update: it took two weeks and two e-mails for Facebook to respond to me this time, and this the crappy little form letter that was waiting for me when I got home from work today:

Hi Jennifer,

Your account was disabled because you violated Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. Prohibited behavior includes, but is not limited to:

• Creating or uploading content that is pornographic, sexually suggestive, or contains nudity
• Harassing other people with sexually explicit language
• Sending unsolicited friend requests or Inbox messages to people you don’t know

You will no longer be able to use Facebook. This decision is final and cannot be appealed.

Please note that for technical and security reasons, we will not provide you with any further details about this decision.

Thanks,

Gianna
User Operations
Facebook

So they have completely kicked me off Facebook now. This is complete BS–they need to review their own freaking policy!! The profile picture that I’m sure started all of this was of me doing a cross knee release, in a regular old bathing suit that completely covered everything. I wasn’t even slipping cheek out the side of the bottoms or anything. I fail to see how that falls under ‘pornographic content, nudity, or sexually suggestive’ unless just having the pole there is sexually suggestive in and of itself, which I do not consider it to be. I guess they shouldn’t allow ballet barres either, since those could be turned vertical and become evil.

Everyone, if you have a Facebook account, check and double check that all your pole pics are really set to private. I thought mine were, but obviously I was wrong. I am trying to decide whether to make a new account under another e-mail and start over, or whether I should just say screw it after this experience. I don’t really want whoever got me kicked off to win, though, you know?

Does anyone know if they ban just by e-mail, or by I.P. address?

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Thanks for the info, everyone! I did not see an option for not having a profile pic when I first set up my account–otherwise I wouldn’t have had one. I thought it just automatically set one of your pictures as your profile pic, but as you can tell I’m not super social networking site savvy, and I’m used to Myspace’s settings. If I remember correctly, my sister had to help me with some of my Facebook settings, as she’d had one for a while.

Still no word from them on my profile. I’m hoping to get an e-mail from them soon so I can just fix everything so it will stop getting reported.

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I could have sworn you could make your profile picture viewable to friends only. I guess not–obviously someone is flagging that one then. I wouldn’t have made a pole pic my profile picture except that pole pictures are the only ones I have up on Facebook–actually the whole reason for making the account in the first place was for a friend who wanted to see some pictures and video of me pole dancing, so I decided to make my Facebook account a kind of showcase for my pole progress. I’ve seen lots of other pole dancing profiles on Facebook, many with pole pictures as their profile shots and never anticipated such a problem.

Hopefully they’ll re-activate my account soon so I can upload some non-pole shots to use as a different profile picture, provided I can catch it before someone complains again. You’d think they’d have something better to do than to sit and watch my profile and make sure that a picture of me doing a CKR is removed. https://www.studioveena.com/img/smilies/icon_rolleyes.gif

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So far I haven’t heard anything from Facebook. I am considering e-mailing them about the situation and seeing if there is some way they can mark my account as already having been reviewed so that my current photos can’t just keep getting flagged over and over again, but the last time I e-mailed them all I got back was a typical form letter, and they never even responded to the part where I pointed out why I didn’t believe my photos to be in violation and asked them to reconsider. The only part of the e-mail they apparently paid any attention to was where I mentioned that they had not actually re-activated my account the way they said they had, so I’m not sure it’s even worth it.

I think what I am going to do is keep checking periodically and just try and pounce on it as soon as I can when it’s re-activated so that it doesn’t get flagged yet again and I have to go through this whole process for a third time. I will double check all my settings, plus I was going to upload some vacation photos and change my profile picture, even though supposedly that is supposed to only be viewable by my friends. However, Facebook’s privacy settings are a bit convoluted, so I may have not checked/unchecked something I was supposed to. I suspect that my profile pic is viewable but that my others are probably not, and I sort of have the suspicion that the complainer might be on my friend Heidi’s friends list judging by the timing of this last de-activation. She has a lot of very religious people on her list, which usually isn’t a bad thing, but several of them are definitely the uptight religious sort that would look on something like pole dancing as a sin. She posted on my wall right after Facebook finally re-activated my account, just saying something to the effect that ‘hey, I see you finally got your profile back up again’ and it wasn’t long after that that it was disabled again. Her having posted on my wall would have been listed in her activities, and anyone on her friends list would have been able to see that, and if they can see my profile picture, then obviously they would have realized it was not taken down and so they probably just re-flagged it.

Very, very frustrating. I hope you get your own situation sorted out soon, sosagely.

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don’t let’em win I’ll be a fellow poler and FB friend !!!!! https://www.studioveena.com/img/smilies/icon_thumleft.gif

That’s why even though I’ve been thinking of possibly just deleting my account, part of me really doesn’t want to. For one, there are several people on there who I mostly keep in touch with through Facebook, and for another, whoever this is, I don’t want them to win, like you said. They shouldn’t be able to essentially force me off Facebook because they are narrow-minded enough to be offended by me hanging upside down from a metal pole, fully clothed.

nyterayn, I’ll gladly add you if I can ever get them to reactivate the damn thing long enough for me to do so! https://www.studioveena.com/img/smilies/icon_evil.gif

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I’m sure it is not Facebook (unless it was some kind of glitch,) but someone, probably a friend of a friend, who is anally retentive enough to sit there and make sure my photos were removed, and when they noticed they were all still up, they flagged them again. The problem is, while Facebook responds to their protests in about a day and a half or two, it takes me a week to get my account up and running again. If I’m not able to log in and remove the pictures or change my settings in time, once they reactivate it someone could easily flag them yet again and then the whole process starts over, which is starting to get extremely frustrating.

I know they have a lot of people on there–I did not know the exact amount, but I knew it was some ridiculously high number of users. What ticks me off is not so much that they disable the account–I would expect that if someone flags you for violation, they disable your account and check into it. However, I would expect that once they review the situation, which they supposedly do, then they should acknowledge that the pictures are not in violation of anything and tell the whiner that they reviewed the situation and the pictures/video/whatever were not in violation of their user rules.

I’m just really tired of this politically correct attitude that not just Facebook, but the whole world seems to have adopted. If someone finds it offensive, then we cannot say/do it, even if it’s not wrong or against any laws or rules.

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So guess what? My account was disabled AGAIN. I logged on Monday at lunch to look at something, and it informed me that my account was once again disabled. Facebook JUST friggin’ reactivated it Saturday night. I barely had time to even realize it was reactivated before they disabled it again. I didn’t take any of my photos down, because I didn’t really have the chance to get on it for long and do much, not to mention I was still deciding what exactly to do. I don’t know when it was disabled again, but it had to have been either sometime Sunday night or Monday morning.

I think this is absolutely ridiculous. I don’t know if someone is just so concerned with getting my pictures taken down that they keep checking, and when they saw that they hadn’t been removed, they reported my profile again, or if Facebook made an error, considering the fact that it took them two tries to actually reactivate my account.

I am really, really getting sick of this. I’m still debating whether or not to delete my account, but I can’t even do that if they keep preventing me from logging in!!!

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Me and Qulia violeated the terms by being too hot for photobucket!

Ha ha, I believe it! It just seriously irritates me that I had to go through this hassle because I put up pictures of me on a pole in just a normal bathing suit doing poses that are much, much less overtly sexual than tons of other pictures on Facebook. I guess they are not wanton sinners though, since there was no pole involved. https://www.studioveena.com/img/smilies/icon_rolleyes.gif I am of the mindset that if you don’t like it, DON’T LOOK AT IT! No one forced whoever complained to view my photos, I’m sure. If they’re actually in violation, sure, flag them, but until you’re seeing enough of me that you might as well consider yourself my gynecologist, get over it.

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Well, two people on a pole is the kind of evil that hasn’t been seen since the Holocaust, you know. https://www.studioveena.com/img/smilies/icon_rolleyes.gif I’m tired of this. I know there will always be lots of people that don’t understand, but until I’m NAKED on my pole and posting pictures of it on a site that doesn’t allow nudity, then I fail to see how I am violating their terms.

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I actually have photobucket, but I’m not sure if I can set them for friends to look at them either, or if I just have to post links to the photos.

Anyway, an update: Facebook finally reactivated my account, after about a week of me not being able to access it. They said they removed the offending photo content, but none of my pictures have been taken down, so I don’t know if they decided to put it back up after I complained or what. I’m still worried this could happen again, since I have no clue who complained–it was probably a third party, and I can’t control if friends of my friends see my pictures. I’m not sure if I’m going to keep the account, but if I do, I’m thinking of taking the photos down just so I don’t have to go through all this hassle again. Who knows how long it’ll take for me to get back in my account again next time? The same person could just keep reporting my photos, whoever it was.

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Thanks for the suggestion! I’ll look into that.

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Go to your privacy settings and be 100% positive you don’t have "friend of friend" checked for any reason. Moreover you cannot put anything like that as your profile pic because you can’t control who sees that. I don’t disagree with you, I just want to point out that facebook now considers a lot of your info, pics included, to be public information and you can no longer control who sees it. So if some under 18 out there sees it and gets offended, there’s not much you can do. You can’t even post pics of yourself breast feeding your baby on fb. Personally, I deleted my facbook because of how scary their privacy settings are now. They give you the illusion of control, but really you have virtually none. In fact if you log into your facebook account and then go other places on line, facebook records where you go for advertising purposes. As in, let’s say you log your fb and then go listen to something on pandora. Facebook will know what songs you listened to. Or if you went to a news website, they would know what stories you read. And they allow third parties, like advertisers or those hiring job applicants, to search everything on your profile totally unfiltered. So it really does NOT matter what your settings are. Everything you post is ultimately fully public. And PLEASE do not post any professional pole pics to facebook. All pictures you upload become the sole property of facebook. I shoud post some info on facebook since I know a lot of people here use it. They are very deceptive about the service they offer.

That’s ridiculous; I knew Facebook was kind of stalkerish, but I did not realize it was THAT bad. I was considering deleting my account a while back, and after reading this I’m going to seriously re-consider it. I would normally not have put a pole dancing pic as my profile picture, but I didn’t have any others uploaded to Facebook and there is actually a setting (supposedly, although now I’m in doubt of it,) to make it so only friends can view your profile picture.

I also had NO clue that Facebook considers any photos you upload to be their property. That is some really, really scary information. I bet a lot of people don’t know any of this. I think you should definitely post some Facebook info, because I’m sure there are a lot of people like me who didn’t know most of the stuff you just posted.

Sounds like there’s a lot of BS going on with them. I’m not sure where to post my pole stuff now (except here, obviously,) for friends that aren’t a part of this community to check out. I don’t want to use Myspace because one of my friends on there actually works with my dad, who does not know that I dance. I wouldn’t lie to him about it if he found out somehow, but I’m also not going to mention it to him because there is a good chance he might freak out and I don’t see the point of unnecessarily adding drama. She might mention something in passing to him without thinking about it.