Unacceptable Business Practices

Policy details

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Unacceptable Business Practices

Ads must not promote products, services, schemes or offers using deceptive or misleading practices, including those meant to scam people out of money or personal information.

Overview

Advertisers can’t run ads that promote products, services, schemes or offers that use identified deceptive or misleading practices, including scams to take money from people or access personal information. We do this to protect people from being taken advantage of by advertisers.

Guidelines

Ads can't:

  • Use deceptive or exaggerated claims about the success of a product or service to mislead someone into purchasing or sharing sensitive information
  • Use the image of a public figure and misleading tactics in order to bait people into engaging with an ad
  • Promise financial benefits by misrepresenting an entity, industry association or news outlet to mislead people or ask them to share sensitive information

We often see these types of violations in schemes related to:

  • Investment or banking opportunities
  • Health or weight loss
  • Background checks
  • Visas or visa lotteries
  • Charity
  • Misleading schemes that promote free products or services
  • Entirely free-to-play sweepstakes apps offering monetary payouts
  • Products or services that claim to boost Facebook or Instagram likes or followers
  • Products or services with functionalities that don’t exist
Reporting
1
Universal entry point

We have an option to report, whether it’s on a post, a comment, a story, a message or something else.

2
Get started

We help people report things that they don’t think should be on our platform.

3
Select a problem

We ask people to tell us more about what’s wrong. This helps us send the report to the right place.

4
Report submitted

After these steps, we submit the report. We also lay out what people should expect next.

Post-report communication
1
Update via notifications

After we’ve reviewed the report, we’ll send the reporting user a notification.

2
More detail in the Support Inbox

We’ll share more details about our review decision in the Support Inbox. We’ll notify people that this information is there and send them a link to it.

3
Appeal option

If people think we got the decision wrong, they can request another review.

4
Post-appeal communication

We’ll send a final response after we’ve re-reviewed the content, again to the Support Inbox.

Takedown experience
1
Immediate notification

When someone posts something that doesn't follow our rules, we’ll tell them.

2
Additional context

We’ll also address common misperceptions and explain why we made the decision to enforce.

3
Policy Explanation

We’ll give people easy-to-understand explanations about the relevant rule.

4
Option for review

If people disagree with the decision, they can ask for another review and provide more information.

5
Final decision

We set expectations about what will happen after the review has been submitted.

Warning screens
1
Warning screens in context

We cover certain content in News Feed and other surfaces, so people can choose whether to see it.

2
More information

In this example, we give more context on why we’ve covered the photo with more context from independent fact-checkers

Enforcement

We have the same policies around the world, for everyone on Facebook.

Review teams

Our global team of over 15,000 reviewers work every day to keep people on Facebook safe.

Stakeholder engagement

Outside experts, academics, NGOs and policymakers help inform the Facebook Community Standards.