Below is a note from Lion Kevin Plummer of the Logan Lions (also Marketing & Communications Chair) regarding his recent experience with Facebook. Any questions or comments should be directed to Lion Kevin (email below).
The Logan Lions Club recently had their Facebook presence (page) removed by Meta(parent company for Facebook) due to suspicion of impersonation. No warning was sent to the administrators of the page (myself).
Upon discovery, which only happened when trying to upload pictures from our time volunteering at the Logan Washboard Festival from my phone, I immediately tried to correct the situation. After about 3 weeks of daily attempts to contact Facebook, I finally managed to get a response by email. They stated that I needed to prove that we were indeed affiliated with Lions International and that we were completely legitimate.
I replied with 13 documents proving our identity with everything from our articles of incorporation, Ohio state verification, a letter of good standing from the legal department at LCI, & our EIN number among other documents, even screenshots from the LCI Portal. The reply email I received the next day, well I thought it was a joke. They stated that they could not accept multiple pdf documents as proof and to please submit a single document. Frustrated, I merged all the documents into 1 big PDF file and created a table of contents to the file so they could easily navigate it.
About 3 days later, I received an email stating that their decision was going to remain and that we could not have our page returned. In addition, my personal account was flagged and I am no longer able to create ANY pages on Facebook. I then figured I would create an account for our club using the club's email address. Within 2 days, that account was terminated.
Our Lions Club has a new Facebook page created through my wife's account, it has been a week and so far, the page is still active. Time will tell.
Over the last 2 months of dealing, I have learned that if the contact information for your club's Facebook contains links to LCI, this may trigger the impersonation algorithm and get your page flagged. IF it happens, plan on a losing battle to get it back up. I advise ALL clubs social media administrators to go into their page administration area and look for the impersonation settings which are in the Meta Verified section and do whatever you can to ensure that your page does not throw a red flag.
Lion Kevin Plummer
Marketing & Communications Chair
