The danger of doing business on Facebook and Instagram…

It's day nine without my personal Facebook page and day eight without my personal and business Instagram accounts.

It's been 24 hours since Facebook emailed me twice telling me that my account has been permanently disabled for not following the Facebook Community Standards.

Unfortunately, we won't be able to reactivate it for any reason. This will be our last message regarding your account." 

Here are a few things I felt necessary to share that I don't think the average person knows about the dangers of doing business with Facebook and Instagram, or at least I didn't. 

• You don't "own" your page, nor do you even own your followers, Facebook does. 

• Facebook doesn't have to give a reason for shutting you down at any given moment. Likewise, if you've been hacked or have violated any rule that you're not even aware of, they can and will permanently disable and or delete your account. No remorse. No explanation.

My author page, which has a six-figure following, is now being managed by a stranger outside the U.S.

Yet, I'm locked out of the page. I hope they can reap from all of my hard work and content I've created. 

I have personally used Facebook as my primary means to grow three platforms over the last decade. I have developed two top businesses as well as shared my writing, becoming a household blogger and published author, three times over. 

Social media is what has enabled me to retire from teaching to raise my five children and work from home. Despite it being one of the biggest blessings, it's also a curse. 

Eight days ago, I got an alert on my Facebook author page, The Real Deal of Parenting, stating that I had 48 hours to dispute a violation. Within an hour, I wrote back asking what I violated, and how I could rectify this. 

Within the next hour, my personal Facebook page with close to 10k contacts, all of my family's photos, videos, and training groups...gone. The same goes for access to my page, The Real Deal of Parenting. 

• Was it that I didn't pay for a single ad? Am I being punished because my page grew organically from 48k followers to 103k+ in a short amount of time? Did it happen when a recent post of mine was shared almost 80k times? 

• Did I violate a hidden FB policy because I had over 3.5 million traction on my author page that day due to parents around the world resonating with my words? 

• Had I become so foolish to think that I could rely on the platform that I had the last decade thinking this would be my safety net to continue to network, to grow my business, to help my clients, and to share my writing for as long as I wanted and needed?

Sadly, I couldn't have been more wrong. 

Just weeks ago, I was on the phone with a reputable book agent. As we were talking about possibly moving forward to work together, he mentioned about the number of email contacts I had been far too low. When I went back to my extensive Facebook following, which was how I always had sold my work before, he told me this wasn't a safe or reliable platform; that it could disappear at any time. 

I thought there was validity to that, but certainly, it would never happen to me? Less than a month later, it happened. I'm notified that I have forever lost my page, which held not only all of my children's photos and videos and memories but also the author page I worked so diligently to build. 

I'm permanently locked out of my 6-figure following and won't be able to access it. 

A decade of blood, sweat, and tears and my means of providing for my family is gone with the snap of a finger because someone at Facebook decided that I wasn't compliant with something in their policy. However, I'll never know what since they don't even need to tell you their reasoning. 

Sharing the milestones of my baby or parenting blogs or my love for God wouldn't be considered in any way harmful or violating. 

As the world is walking through an unprecedented time with the unfathomable losses of lives due to COVID-19 and the tremendous amount of jobs lost or on the brink of financial corruption, it seems Facebook and Instagram are at an ultimate high of disabling both personal and business accounts on "their" platforms.

A warning to all who never thought this could be them or possibly weren't aware this could even happen. 

What I worked tirelessly to share and grow apparently was never mine and now is gone for good.