03/09/2026
Facebook Scams? The Attack of the Algorithms...
When we opened our business back in 2015, Facebook was a relatively cost effective way for small businesses to promote themselves.
Over the years, it has become increasingly more difficult to negotiate the "Attack of the Algorithms" as I shall call them. For a fiver, you could promote an event and it would generally help bring in a few new customers.
When Meta took over, we noticed that you could pay the same fiver but they reduced the reach of your posts considerably. This then morphed into no longer being able to spend that fiver, it had to be at least a tenner to get anywhere near the reach you got previously! The fiver is now longer an option at all, you can't get anything for a fiver, it's now a minimum spend of a tenner per event! This might be piffle for the big boys but not for the likes of us.
Eventually, small business cottoned on to the fact that when they created official events through Facebook, the algorithms began to automatically reduced the reach of that post, unless you spent the obligatory minimum tenner or more! To get round this, people began posting a photo of their event and placed a link to their website in the comments section instead. This worked reasonably well in getting a greater reach, until just recently.
Meta cottoned on to that and have now restricted the use of external website links in the comments section to two per month! If you try to override it, they just automatically disable the link.
To add to this, many have been what's called "shadow banned."
This is the act by social media controllers to restrict the reach of users posts which it doesn't like! A rather insidious practice to say the least because it reveals that your account is being monitored ready for if and when you put a foot out of line.
Being a small business is hard enough these days. Corporate interest is it seems, allowed to impact any business which dares go against its avaricious practices or twisted ethics.
Wouldn't it be amazing if corporate business was all about helping the smaller guys instead of crushing competition at all costs and screwing every last penny out of them!
You will have heard of Facebook scams but I'm beginning to wonder if Facebook/Meta is the SCAM!!
(That's it, we're double shadow banned now!)
