Would you be surprised if you saw an ad for a gun on Facebook? I'm not sure I would -- I mean, I've seen a thousand ads for bogus weight loss products that are falsely endorsed by Dr. Oz, so I pretty much assumed anything could go -- but apparently it's against company policy to advertise weapons on the social media site. The specific language from Facebook reads, "Ads may not promote the sale or use of weapons, ammunition, or explosives."
So you'd think if someone snuck a forbidden ad past the regulatory guidelines, Facebook would just delete the ad, right? Well, in the case of several gun sellers who ran a sweepstakes for an AR-15 rifle recently, Facebook didn't just kill the promotion -- they killed the company pages altogether. In one case, a business lost more than 27,000 hard-won followers with this single punitive action by Facebook.
Read More
Comment Overload >