On or around January 9^th, millions of businesses across the U.S. and around the world received notifications that Facebook would no longer be recommending their pages. Businesses with pages related to wine, beer, and spirits were particularly impacted, but it affected businesses in a wide range of sectors: health, wellness, beauty, gaming, sports, and non-profits, to name just a handful. (See a list of additional business sectors impacted .)

The notification caused immediate concern. Facebook has made itself mission critical to many businesses to communicate directly with their customers. The company ceasing to recommend business pages has the potential to decrease reach and revenue.

The information that Facebook provided was confusing. It said that page owners “didn’t follow the rules” and that the content didn’t comply with “Community Standards.” It listed these standards as “high-level rules against sexual, violent, profane or hateful content.” (The company provided a link with additional detail.)

However, when business owners looked at their Facebook pages, it said that there was no violation and that the page was in good standing. Simultaneously, it listed Page Recommendations as “Suspended,” adding to the confusion.

Page recommendations are where Facebook suggests, essentially, “Here’s a page you might like.” It is an important part of growing followership and growing a business.

Soon, it became clear that, while businesses associated with wine, beer, and spirits were particularly impacted, it was a far and wide issue. To date, I have heard from businesses that have been impacted in North America (including almost all 50 states in the U.S. as well as Canada and Mexico), the U.K. Europe, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, and Central America. These businesses span a range of sectors. Someone with Meta Verified stated that they chatted with an agent who said that “millions” of pages were impacted.

Facebook said in its initial email that page owners could “request a review.” However, typically this review would come via a specific violation. Without a violation, there is no obvious means to request the review, other than going through a labyrinthine process to find out how to do so. It’s also unclear on what timeline the review might happen.

Given Facebook’s importance, businesses owners have spent significant amounts of time trying to resolve the issue. Companies have paid consultants. People who make their living running businesses’ social media pages were concerned that they had done something wrong.

Marketing companies heard from wineries that they worked with and tried to provide guidance. Businesses altered their Facebook pages, trying to remove any content or settings that might have caused the problem. (Here’s something I personally recommend business page owners do.)

Throughout all of this, what has Meta said about the issue? Nothing. It’s left businesses, many of which spend substantial amounts of money advertising on its platform, twisting in the wind.

Meta has a serious PR problem, and it’s failed PR 101: Get ahead of the problem. A simple statement saying “We’re aware of the issue” would have saved millions of business owners around the world untold hours of effort and anxiety. Instead, it appears that the company can’t be bothered.

The good news is that some business owners have received subsequent notifications that page recommendations have been restored. (This happened to the Northwest Wine Report Facebook page.) However, they are currently in the minority.

Overall, what’s going on with this issue? It’s unclear at present.

I do not believe that Facebook has made a global change to how they deal with age-restricted content or how they deal with alcohol-related content specifically. Rather, my guess – and it’s just that – is that the company is trying to algorithmically tighten up how they deal with age-restricted content. In doing so, they took recommendations away from millions of pages.

To the extent that this is true, over time, Facebook’s algorithms should clean up the mess that they created. Page Recommendations should be restored where appropriate. However, algorithms are not perfect. Some pages will likely continue to not be recommended, though they should be.

What does all this mean for business owners? Consider it a warning.

Facebook, Instagram, and other social media outlets are not pages that you own. They can be taken away at any moment. That has the potential to severely negatively impact businesses.

My strong recommendation is to focus a significant amount of your business efforts on outlets that you control: websites, email lists, and other things. I also recommend using multiple social media platforms. This both enhances reach to different audiences and spreads out risk so that you are not singularly reliant on any single platform.

I’m not saying don’t use these platforms. I’m saying don’t have all of your eggs in one basket. Facebook, Instagram, or whoever can take that basket away at any moment. If anything, the mess Facebook created with suspending page recommendations proved that.

NB: To my regular readers, I apologize for my extreme focus on this issue over the last week. A substantial number of businesses have been impacted, including many in the wine industry. I am trying to drive the issue to resolution by raising awareness. We’ll be returning to our regularly scheduled program shortly.

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