This past week, I signed up for a video service and upgraded, for just one month, to one of their higher-paying plans, which offers a "Call-to-Action Button" to embed clickable, living links to be embedded in videos to make for much easier promotion of a cause or a business or a website. With great enthusiasm and dedication, I made homemade images and composed a summary of my story and my daughter's in different colors of print; I know that attaching personal stories to causes can pull people in like no amount of research and arguments can. I wanted to add the "Call-to-Action Button" at the end of my video for easier exposure for my petition. As I was brand-new to making videos and this was my first chance, I had issues from the start and continually contacted the customer online "Help Desk" for answers to my questions. Finally, that evening, after taking some complaints from Facebook users which I knew to be legitimate, I forwarded thse to the Customer "Help Desk" and I was able to revise my video and to resolve those issues easily.
Something totally unexpected happened, though! This past Tuesday evening, on the day that I had created the video, I found that I was no longer able to share it on Facebook. I tried to share it from the video service's host site, and when I did, I was aghast to get a message that read like this: "This video cannot be shared because it contains a link that is deemed to be spammy or unsafe." And they gave my embedded link: http:tiny.cc/mrsahw, which is the shortened link to my Change.org petition. What?! How could a link to a petition be spam?! Had someone reported the petition or the link? I know that, just days ago, I found that a Facebook user had blocked me after I sent her a link to my petition (along with an early birthday wish, as I try to always do for those in my social networks). Could this user be behind this?
Wednesday morning, when I logged into Facebook to circulate my petition and my video, I was dismayed to discover that posts of my video had been removed from my Facebook pages and I got a Facebook notice about a complaint that was posted as a comment about the video. And when I visited the group page, I saw that that my video had been indeed been pulled by Facebook, as my video's link was gone and it said, "Attachment Unavailable." As Wednesday and Thursday progressed, I felt really depressed and even felt that life may not be worth living and especially, that Facebook was not to be trusted. I tried to post my video to Facebook by means of theit URL link and I got the same warning about its embedded link being deemed "unsafe or spammy." This same thing happened whenever I attempted to share this video to Facebook. Facebook users surmised that Facebook was pulling my video because they thought I may be violating copyright by using a song, which the video-making services requires to make videos through them. They state that music that they offer for production is paid for by them and is commercially licensed for use. Plus, I have been a paying customer. However, I want to make clear that the Facebook warnings that I have been getting about the video have always pertained to my embedded link being allegedly "spammy or unsafe" and mentioned NOTHING about violating copyrights.
I have spent much time submitting dispute notices to Facebook and screenshots hoping to provide evidence as to why my link was neither spammy or unsafe. I did this twice and I have not heard back from Facebook. So I have revised the video once again and I removed the shortened link and replaced it with the longer, original Change.org link. And, this time, it seems that I can now share this video on Facebook! But this begs the question: How and why did a video that is intended to use the video-maker's personal story annd embedded link to gain a petition exposure, get marked as spam in the first place and get pulled so that it could not be shared? Anh how any why did even a shortned link get marked as spam?
I may never know the answers to thse questions, especially if Facebook never gets back with me. But I know that this is by no means the first time that I have been accused of spamming others users in my Facebook social network and I'm sure that it won't be my last. I know that I have been removed from people's Facebook friends list and even blocked, and it was often because, as they accused me right before these actions, that I had been "spamming" them with unwanted Causes requests. To be fair, in the case of those who are inactive online and don't post much and where my Causes invites over the months have no doubt been piling up, that seemed to thse users like spam. Now, I don't get nearly as much involved in posting Causes invites on people's pages as I have gotten involved in other things that I deem to be mre enjoyable. But does anything that is unwanted and annoying actually deserve to be called "spam"?
What is the technical defintion of "spam"? According to Wikipedia, "Spam is the use of electronic messaging to send unsolicited bulk messages, especially advertising, indiscriminately." And Webopedia says: "Spam is most often considered to be electronic junkmail or junk news postings." Later in the paragraph, it wraps up what really is spam in the technical sense: "Real spam is generally email advertising for some product sent to a mailing list or newsgroup."
So why does virtually everything online that is deemed annoying or simply unwanted by users end up being called "spam" even if it is perfectly helpful or merely harmless? I cannot count the times that I have received unfriendly inbox messages by Facebook users who accused me of spamming them, simply by sending them invites to a cause or causes that they personally did not care about (though they will never admit that but just wiggle out of it by calling me a spammer). This used to upset me until I saw that these were usually people who had unsolved personal problems of their own that had nothing to do with me. And Facebook does not help matters by making its "Report" feature so easy to use by anyone who is willing to abuse this feature or who just doesn't know how social networks function. I can understand that social networks take spam seriously because an "attack" of unwanted material can eat up bandwidth and cause serious problems with computers. And I can attest to the fact that, like everyone else, I constantly receive, especially through email or through Facebook, unwanted messages and requests which I simply ignore as I do not have time to act on every request that is made of me. Like anyone reading this, we all have to learn how and when to say "no" but not to say "no" to everything so as to seem unfriendly or negative.
And yes, I know that there always will be people who are not interested in causes, not even in my petition campaign and that no amount of awareness or attempts on my part are going to get them on board as supporters, unless some kind of crisis enters their lives that relates to my petition (and I don't wish that on anyone!). And I know that anyone who advocates for anything worthy can tell stories about being detracted or meeting with ignorance, oppoaition or simple apathy. But just because a message, or a cause invitation or an even an effort to sell a product (many in my networks have written books that they are trying to sell), is unwanted by certain people does not make it spam. Spam, according to technical defintions, is when we send impersonal, unsolicited, automated, mass messages to large numbers of people and often to get them to buy a product or donate to a cause. I always send PERSONAL emails to people, never mass messages to large numbers of people except to small groups of people who are networked in the same group or nonprofit's board, and I seldom do that. But all of us, including me, have "Spam" folders in our email inboxes and get MANY spammy messages, true spam. However, I think it is a mistake to call everything that is unwanted or unsolicited as spam. In that case, nothing can get done!
Probably the most unsolicited (and often very unwanted) act of all time was when God, in the Person of His Son, gave His life for us on a wooden cross, if you are a person of faith and believe the Christian Scriptures, as I do and countless others do. But we can all point to many things both online and in-person, that we did not solicit (ask for) or even want at the time, but which turned out to be blessings, particularly when precious children come to us as "unplannned pregnancies." Yes, I know that spam refers only to online things but I think this illustrates the point that just because things are unwanted does not make them offensive.
Getting back to my link which Facebook has deemed as "spammy," I ask you to visit that very link and decide for yourself if Facebook has made a correct or fair judgement:
Here is is allegedly spammy link: http://tiny.cc/mrsahw
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