Links to Ning from Facebook blocked?

[Hugh]

Is there a problem with Ning and Facebook? A member alerted me that links to my network from my Facebook page were being blocked with the following message:

Sorry

The link you are trying to visit has been reported as abusive by Facebook users. To learn more about staying safe on the Internet, visit Facebook's Security Page. Please also read the Wikipedia articles on malware and phishing.

I checked another Ning network I know that runs a Facebook page and they seem to have the same issue.

http://www.facebook.com/HarringayOnline

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bowes-and-Bounds-Connected/1655707968...

[Eric Suesz]

If there is an expectation that Facebook is blocking content based on feeds or even arbitrarily, why not temporarily stop posting to Facebook? 

What are some alternatives, Donna? Sharing it in a different way to your Facebook page? We anecdotally have seen better results w/r/t blocking by manually copying and pasting content instead of using a share functionality to share things on Facebook, but that sounds tedious. 

[Donna Maria Coles Johnson]

Hi Eric,

Well, manually copying and pasting is something I would do as the network owner because I have a more vested interest than my users in getting content out there. But I doubt my users will not do that in enough numbers to make a difference. If they see me sharing, they will want to share too, and if I tell them they have to cut and paste from my site, they won't do it because it's too tedious as you said.

Unfortunately, alternatives include moving to a platform that FaceBook's system is not blocking.

:(

[Eric Suesz]

Totally understand that manually doing this is not really an option. Ugh. I'm really sorry that this issue is happening to some people. I have been testing it, but it seems kind of random.

It's always up to you, but I don't know if moving to another platform would be advisable over this specific issue because it will probably be cleared up in a few days, and it seems it could be happening to people outside of Ning, too. From everything I can glean from reports here, from our team, and elsewhere, it looks like Facebook's filters are closing more tightly. But, the clues we have aren't consistent and Facebook did let us know that they cleared up blocking. So, there is still a detail here that we don't understand. 

[BARKPARK CREATOR]

It's blocking every possible means of directing traffic from Facebook to Ning. 

This is pretty deplorable behavior on the part of Facebook. 

We leave in three weeks to start shooting our first series and there is no means to publicize the new community site at Facebook where we have the support of many, many pages with followers in the tens and even hundreds of thousands.  WAY too dangerous to plan any sort of promotion when this sort of slanderous error/block message can (and has been all day today in tests) appear. 

I can't believe after all the work that has gone into building this new community site, we are going to have to find an alternate solution in this kind of a hurried state. 

GAH!

[Eric Suesz]

Totally understand that this is a frustration for you, BARKPARK. Can you provide a link to your Facebook Page? I would like to take a look and see if we can reproduce this error and maybe glean a few more clues out of this. If this is affecting your hundreds of thousands of followers, I'd like to help out if I can.  

[BARKPARK CREATOR]

Not my hundreds of thousands, we have three promotions we are set to get off the ground with others who are telling their 100's of thousands of followers to join our community in order to meet up with our production out on the road this summer.

 When I send these promotional partners the link in a message or to their walls- up come the errors messages. There are now two different errors coming up. 

I just emailed the images to David in support. 

I just reproduced the errors two minutes ago when i posted a link on my wall and again when I tried to send a message. The link from the wall now throws an ERROR 500 message. 

The spam block is still applying to links in messages. 

No thumbnails/previews. 

[Donna Maria Coles Johnson]

I am so sorry to hear about this, and its impact on your production. What sorts of things can people in this community do to find out more about what you are doing so we can perhaps consider helping you get the word out elsewhere? I don't know what you do, but I'm figuring it has something to do with dogs? My friends and followers love animals. Not sure if I can help, but am interested in seeing if there's anything that can be done, considering the time sensitive issues you are apparently dealing with.

[Janettee McCrary]

I'll be happy to pass on info too - I'm a member of a HUGE group of rescue people and I'm sure we could get the word out...

[Eric Suesz]

Can you share a link to your actual Facebook Page? We need to test the page itself. 

[BARKPARK CREATOR]

www.facebook.com/barkparkusa

donna: www.barkpark.ning.com is the ning site. thanks so much for the kind offer to help spread the word. dogs tend to motivate all sorts of good will. :)

we were planning to map the domain over the weekend, but the facebook blocks make us fear for the branding opportunities. 

[Eric Suesz]

That is helpful. Okay, first thing first: You need to set up a Facebook App. Right now, there is no connection from your Ning Network to your Facebook Page. So, this issue isn't actually related to your network on that level. 

Domain mapping will not affect the integration. One thing to keep in mind is that the details of this integration are based on your own personal Facebook profile. You are in effect creating an app through the Facebook Developer network. We give you the instructions, but the app creation is done by you. So I am not able to create this connection for you. It requires you to authenticate it. 

[Debby de Wilde]

Eric, the connection from my network to Facebook (for editing the app) has been disconnected for a LONG time now. 

I have already submitted a ticket about that on Nov 23, 2011 (ticket#00548979)

So it's probably not related to this isssue.