Ah facebook, your lack of transparency is dismaying.

Just another reason I REFUSE to join facebook... a pointless app developed and run by a gaggle of "jagoffs."

Did he buy the ads using a credit card? Charge-off, maybe?

This is absolutely not unheard of. I work at an ad agency that was doing a major facebook campaign for a liquor brand last year. To facilitate easy editing of the page after approvals, I made myself the administrator.

We spent a lot of money on advertising, but one day IN THE MIDDLE OF MY CAMPAIGN I got an email telling me the page was taken down because of a violation of the terms of use. They assumed I wasn't an official representative of the brand.

After some frantic emails between the ad team and I, it was finally restored. I have no doubt that Carlo's page will be restored after this attention on consumerist.

Perhaps the story is that the video game in question was not being licensed by the NCAA or the colleges that they were using. There's a big fuss about it on non-Facebook pages, and the NCAA probably requested that Facebook remove it.

@spoco: NCAA does not have a lock on the word College or Lacrosse. Now, if this was NCAA Lacross, then there would be a case. But, I supposed the NCAA could make an argument that since they are the preeminent governing body for college sports, the generic term "College Lacrosse" could be confused with NCAA.

Maybe the video game maker should just go with Lacrosse 2010.

Did you mean to lie in the title of this article? The page is still there:
[www.facebook.com]

His letter doesn't even say it was deleted, it says his "publishing rights have been blocked." That's a pretty big distinction, because if it had been truly deleted he would have lost the 42,000+ fans he had accumulated. The page is still there, he just has to prove he has the right to have that page and all will be well.

@Cant_stop_the_rock:

Title says deactivates now, but article still says deleted.

I smell EA, for some reason... They love to shut down/buy small developers and this seems like just their thing; bring up some false or nearly baseless claim against the page to get it suspended.

We shall see I guess.

Kind of stumped here as to why this guy didn't just put the money into create a regular old web-page hosted on GoDaddy or something.

@Josh Marquart:

yeah, why didn't the guy take the extra time to code/build a page and pay for it instead of using a free, simple page that connected him to 42,000 people in a short time? It's a mystery.

I'm personally surprised EA never made a college lacrosse game, the NCAA championship games routinely draw 40,000+ per game and the game style would be perfect for the "Shot Stick".

It would be like combing the idea of hockey with the style of basketball and could result in a really good game if done right.

Would it really be so hard to tell people how their page violates the Terms of Use? Isn't it reasonable to think that at least of few of the violations will be accidental?

We simply need a federal law that states no online service, website, discussion board, etc. can terminate anyone's account without specifically quoting the offending text, and then specifically referring to which rule it violates and how.

Companies need to be responsible for their damn rules, not just kick someone out for vague and no reasons.

Further, he should sue for all the money back and additional damages to his business / lost business / lost contest, etc.

Way to Go DE-Facebook

@Mike Amory: @Josh Marquart: Oh let me guess, he's not perfect like you are Josh? Nice way to blame the OP.

@JPropaganda: Attention - Due to our complete incompetence, we reserve the right to not lookup information on file confirming your identity with us at anytime and further to take any action against you at any time for no cause and without merit, and will not be held responsible for any damages to you or your customers, nor do we intend for anyone to use our website, contrary to our posted advertising, for personal or business use.

Just sayin'

@WhoAsked You: Oh absolutely. I was PISSED!

The issue is that their ad teams and their group permissions teams don't communicate as much as they should. Cuz facebook is a gigantic company.

Please don't think i was apologizing for facebook. But I'm pretty sure this attention should get the group back up and running.

@Cant_stop_the_rock: There's a big difference between "lie" and "mistake", and it's usually intent. I don't think they meant to mislead anyone, but it sure is great to jump to conclusions and make false accusations.

@JPropaganda: Well, you see, this is why people shouldn't use Facebook to advertise. Buy a freaking domain name, some domain space, and build your own website.

@DefineStatutory: I love the smell of sarcasm in the morning.

@Rectilinear Propagation: This right here is always my biggest complaint. Why can't they just be like "You violated this part:" and then quote it so the user has some idea of what the hell just happened.

This is one of Facebook's biggest problems. It's way too flaky in dealing with people. While I get that they don't really have much of a support staff, I've seen some horror stories from other developers in dealing with the company.

Hitting up the dev forums is probably one of the other ways to get FB's attention. The dev team can't ignore you forever if enough people join in.

@AngryK9: Really, you need to leave marketing strategy to the professionals. KTHX.

@Cant_stop_the_rock: A core part of your promotion efforts is frozen and the site admins are unreachable despite frantic pleas. There's nothing to suggest this will change. Your effort will likely wither on the vine, akin to telling iD that their DOOM group "works", even if it only lists the DOS version.
I'd call that "broke".
And, I didn't realize you were an editor for Consumerist. Congrads on the promotion!

Dear OP:

Contact Judy at facebook.

Judy Wang
Account Manager I Facebook, Inc.
(650) 319 5964
judy@facebook.com

@spindle: It smells like ... freedom.

I didn't know Snake Eyes played Lacrosse!

Awesome.

@AngryK9: Yeah! What kind of advertiser wants access to tens of millions of people, many in the 18-35 demographic?

@MikeF74: yeah, but a typical matchup in the game was Duke vs. Johns Hopkins, not Elite Durham school vs. Great Medical School.

@aka_bigred:
I'm proud to say I've never visited Facebook for anything - nor am I likely to.

@squinko:This is a good site but I've seen a few mistakes in my short time here, all of which made an otherwise ho-hum article into a more sensational (and thus clickable) David Vs. Goliath case.

It's kind of like how Fox News has twice incorrectly labeled a shady Republican as a Democrat. When mistakes always lean to one direction, it looks like it's on purpose even when it's not. Please be careful.

@AngryK9: Trust me, the brand has a website. It's possible to advertise on facebook AND have a website. Just like you can advertise both in magazines AND newspapers.

@WhoAsked You: Wow, you have it totally and completely backwards. Actually, companies should act on common sense and shouldn't waste time and money writing a bunch of lawyerly rules.

If you do something stupid that pisses off the community, it shouldn't matter whether there's some rule somewhere or not. And if you do something that would normally be a problem, and so has a rule against it, but the way you do it is just fine, there's no reason they should harass you about it.

Try running your friendships the way you suggest businesses should run their services and see how well you do.

@headcase: There is always going to be a degree of sensationalism is most, if not all, forms of journalism; it's to be expected. I just hate the users who are always "IT CLEARLY SAYS 34 DOLLARS AND YOU WROTE 36" in every article. Sometimes it's warranted, but like I said, I don't think Phil meant to intentionally mislead anyone.

Sometimes when people post that X was done just for page views, I'd like to simply say "No shit, Sherlock", but I don't want to get disemvowled.

@Adam Reimer: Heh. Wang.

@GyroMight: HAH!

I thought it was a black ops type game at first.

Thank you Consumerist. Our page was just reactivated! You guys are the best. Thank you!

well, the typeface etc, does look EA-ish

@Brian James Schend: @JPropaganda: Magazines AND newspapers? That's crazy talk!

@WhoAsked You:

How am I blaming the OP?

@Carlo Sunseri: Yay! That's awesome news.
FYI, you might want to send an email to Ben, Megan or Phil. They'd love to update the story with the good news, but can't always check the comments.
Warm fuzzies on reading your post, tho!

Thanks Trai_Dep. I sent them both an email. It would have taken a while for me to get hold of Facebook on my own....

Consumerist has new biggest fan!

I had a similar thing happen to a fan page that I created (95,000+ fans and growing daily) ...

▬▌Top Mafia - Adds, Invites, Tips, Tricks, etc▐▬
[www.facebook.com]

About 1 week ago, not only was the fan page "disabled" (admins could no longer publish content) but my facebook account along with a fellow admins facebook accounts were both disabled. Amazingly enough, Facebook re-enabled both of our accounts (in under 48 hours). Still not a SINGLE word from ANYONE at facebook as to why our fan page was disabled. Here is a more detailed story...

▬▌Call to Action ... Facebook Principle #1▐▬
[www.facebook.com]

I'm planning on reaching out to Colleen McCreary (VP, Chief People Officer @ Zynga) to see if she can be of any help.

Any help that "The Consumerist" can deliver on this matter will be much appreciated.

Regards,
Jason Y
~~Yonks

PLEASE try to contact a local TV station... such as:
[www.thepittsburghchannel.com]

Facebook is slow answering correspondence from Joe-Schmo's, but when it comes to a media outlet asking questions, they usually jump to action.