Facebook Page Imposter Syndrome

In this blog we’ll discuss the emergence of a frustrating Facebook issue we’ve noticed during 2024 - business pages being deactivated by Meta, with the note that they break rules around “Impersonation”. 

New pages might be taken down immediately after creation, or ones that have been active for years without problem are suddenly flagged as impersonators and removed. This problem can cause a lot of disruption in your online organisation, so going into 2025 we wanted to recap what we’ve seen and propose a few steps to help out. 

Below we’ll talk about what we believe is causing the rise in this false impersonation issue as well as giving a few suggestions that might help protect your pages. 

We had initially suspected the gradual roll-out of the paid service Meta Verified, which boasts “Impersonation Protection”, might be the cause of the problem - and recent conversations with Meta’s support team have confirmed this. It's certainly understandable a new system like this might take time to properly function over such a huge number of accounts, and while it could be good news in the long term (an increasingly secure Facebook is safer for your business), businesses can be left looking for ways to solve or avoid the problem in the meantime. 

Protecting your account from being taken down for impersonation

While Meta has not released any official information about how to prevent your page from being taken down for impersonation, we have seen our customers take steps which help negate the situation.

• Challenge Page Deactivations Quickly: The first step is always to follow the on-screen instructions and challenge the page deactivation whenever possible - the sooner you initiate this after a takedown the quicker the page is likely to be restored (sometimes the process can even be immediate).
  
  
• Contact Support: Next, it’s a good idea to open a dialogue with Meta support - while this can be a tiresome process, persistence is key, even having a record (case number) of previous conversations about the same issue may help over time to make clear to Meta you’re experiencing a persistent issue that needs to be addressed.
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  The Facebook Business Help Centre is the place to start when contacting their support team https://www.facebook.com/business/help.
  
  

• Back to Basics: There are also proactive actions you can take; one method we’ve seen yield results for our clients has been to change the way they approach page basics, things like Page Names, Profile Pictures, and URLs.
  
  If I have an identical profile picture across all of my brand pages, this can raise the suspicions of automatic systems that these pages are impersonating each other. The practice is most common if your convention is to have a brand logo as the profile picture, but this can easily be worked around; one idea is to start making custom profile pictures that combine logo and branch name, giving you the benefits of a unique logo per location and the familiarity of your brand logo at the same time. 
  The same logic can be applied if you’re using near identical Page Names or URL’s across your brand - changing the format, even slightly, might be just the difference needed to steer clear of automatic detection.
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• User Health: Another area to look at is your team/users across the affected pages. Having users with security flags against their personal accounts attached to your brand as a whole can also draw the attention of Meta’s automated systems.
  You and your team can check in on the status of your personal accounts by signing into Facebook and then visiting the Profile Status page - if problems do exist then this page will also walk you through addressing them with Meta support.
  

• A Secure Business Manager: With a lot of staff in your organization it can be hard to keep on top of who might have a personal account issue at any time though - centralizing access to pages within a Business Portfolio Account (sometimes called a Business Manager Account) is a good start to dealing with this. A healthy business portfolio set-up means your organization can be reactive to situations like the impersonation issue as they arise.
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• Get Verified: Finally - while the introduction of paid Meta Verified features might be the cause of the impersonation issue, it may also offer a solution. As well as page Impersonation Protection itself, the service also allows access to advanced levels of Meta support - it’s something we’ve seen good results with and recommend exploring if these features are available in your region. 

The frustration that comes with page ‘takedowns’ can make new issues like the impersonation problem feel overwhelming, although knowing the underlying cause and having a few actionable steps at hand hopefully helps. Quickly following up on issues as they appear with Meta support, taking basic steps to differentiate your brand, and looking into Meta Verified are great places to start.

Ready to discuss local social media for your brand? Discover how SocioConnect can protect your multi-location business and elevate your operational efficiency. Book in a call if you'd like more information.

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