As many of you will be aware, yesterday marked the third birthday of Building the Revell Me 262B-1/U1 Nachtjäger in 1/32 Scale, and for the rest of this week, it has been discounted to only 12 Australian dollars. We do this pretty regularly with all our titles, and the website automatically uploads these announcements to Facebook, Instagram, and Bluesky.
Within seconds of that happening yesterday, Facebook removed the post from both my KLP Publishing and personal accounts, citing it as spam:
Subsequent attempts to post this announcement manually all met with the same fate. On each occasion, I sought to have the decision reviewed, but of course, there’s no one home but robots at Facebook HQ, so I’m not expecting a response at all, let alone one adjudged in my favour. That was certainly the case when this exact situation occurred back in August!
After a few more tries, some further testing, and the kind assistance of Les Applebee, I was able to determine that Facebook’s dopey AI-driven algorithms were being triggered by the the word “Nachtjäger” in both the title and description. This is simply a German word that means “nightfighter”. Remove the word, and the posts get through. That’s bad enough by itself, but to then cite the reason for removing the post as “spam” is utterly ludicrous. But hey, we have to play the game by their rules, as stupid, ambiguous, arbitrary and inconsistent as they are.
So with Facebook’s capricious application of its own “Community Standards”, I can no longer rely on it as a predictable marketing platform for KLP Publishing—though I will obviously continue to post there as normal, to the extent that the algorithms don’t interfere. But here’s the important bit, and the thrust of this post:
The best way to get news about what we’re doing is directly, via an email subscription to our blog. This is free from the vagaries and vicissitudes of social media algorithms, and the corporate mandates that drive them. So if you’re reading this, but are not a subscriber, I would greatly appreciate it if you could use the simple form below and sign up.
Many thanks for reading this far, and thank you all for your continued support!
I too have been banned by “Faceplant” and their ignorance. I was not political, I followed the “Standards”, and they destroyed my 15 year old account with no reason given. Not many options when my Society (American Society of Aviation Artists) and so many others like yours use it as communication sources. So much for a free and open “better way”.