In my early days as a writer, I attended many conferences where we were told that it was critical, as authors, to have a presence on social media like Facebook and X (then Twitter). I was reluctant. I’d had a Facebook page, once. I used it mainly to connect with former classmates. Since I was only close friends with a small number of my connections, I’d decided to delete the page. But as a budding author, I was eager to grow my career. So, I accepted the advice, figuring I would find a way to make the most of it.
At first, I had no idea of what to post. We were advised, as authors, to talk about our books on an average of 1 in 5 posts, the others being unrelated. “Be an entertainer,” they said. I think many of those early posts for me consisted of an abundance of glittery images, wishing people a happy whatever-day-of-the-week it was. I appreciate that anyone was kind enough to favor anything I posted with a “like.” I doubt they would fly today, though you never can tell what might grab someone’s attention.
The next phase for me started when I began posting random pictures of beautiful scenery, cities, flowers, anything that caught my attention. Followers told me they enjoyed my posts, that they appreciated the break I provided from the political ranting in their feed, something I have never had any desire to be a part of. Close friends would often say things to me like “Why can’t we all get back to posting pictures of our dogs?” Mind you, this was YEARS ago.
My time on social media, namely Facebook, piqued when I met my husband, then boyfriend, Bill. My followers loved seeing what we were up to on weekends, and I began adding an influx of self-photographed nature scenes to my daily posts. Close friends and even acquaintances could probably tell just from the looks on our faces that Bill was the one for me. When we got married and had our first child, the amount of content I had to share with my followers exploded. I probably made too many personal pictures public, but I was (and still am) very happy, and I was excited to share our happy lives with the world.
In June, I attended a barbecue with my family. Later that evening, I logged into my Facebook account where I discovered a post siting that a picture on my author account was in ‘violation,’ prompting me to provide my login information to prevent my account from being suspended. I made a split-second decision to provide the information, realizing almost immediately that the message hadn’t actually come from Facebook. Seconds later, my account was suspended for real, stripping me of the personal and author page I had been managing for fifteen years, and the connections I’d made with almost 4K friends, many more followers and another 1.5K followers on my author page.
I’ve reached out to Facebook. Numerous times. They don’t seem very interested in getting back to me.
I’ve been working hard to make peace with what happened. The truth is, I’d had many days where I was asking myself what I was doing on Facebook at all, very tired of seeing the angry political and non-political rants in my feed, not feeling as though the time I was putting into the medium was actually helping me to sell books, questioning if I was simply wasting my time and making my job as a writer a million times more difficult than it already is.
I had received “legitimate” warnings from social media in the past. When I say “legitimate” I mean that they came from the media site itself, not from a hacker. When the “violations” were “investigated” and it was discovered that I’d done nothing wrong, I was free to go on my merry way. I’ve been questioned by Amazon twice, asking me to provide them with the proof that I have the rights to my cover images. Fortunately, my cover artist has been amazing with providing me with what they need. When I learned of a fellow author who was not as fortunate, who lost her Amazon account over a very similar issue, it made me feel as though I’m actually quite fortunate. It was also the final straw.
With great reluctance, after a long month of stewing, I’ve decided to create a new Facebook account. I don’t know if it will ever be what it once was. I’m having difficulty reaching out to close friends and family because they, understandably, think I’m the hacker. Going forward, I’ll be doing my best to reach out to the people I know directly. I pray this never happens to you. And I sincerely hope better policies will be put into place to protect all people, and their accounts, from such attacks going forward.
If you’d like to “friend” me on my new Facebook Account, you can connect with me HERE!