Did Facebook page publishing authorization process stop you in your social media tracks?

*raises hand here*

I am a business owner and my company does social media content management, including management of various Facebook business pages, for over a decade now. I was there when the first Facebook page launched. It was less complicated back then.

Fast forward to the present. I’ve been seeing the Facebook page publishing identification checks notification as an alert banner on top of the pages that my team and I manage.

I have clicked the alert banner. It says basically that it is for those managing and running political campaigns and ads.

Since we do not, so I ignored it. 

But then I should have dug deeper….

Why Facebook is enforcing the page publishing authorization verification process

This is where it all started back in 2018 blog, referencing the election.

Facebook said, “We know we were slow to pick up foreign interference in the 2016 US elections. Today’s updates are designed to prevent future abuse in elections — and to help ensure you have the information that you need to assess political and issue ads, as well as content on Pages. By increasing transparency around ads and Pages on Facebook, we can increase accountability for advertisers — improving our service for everyone.”¹

Now, this is what the authorization notification banner did not say, but it’s on the same article from Facebook: “Today, we’re also announcing that people who manage Pages with large numbers of followers will need to be verified. Those who manage large Pages that do not clear the process will no longer be able to post. This will make it much harder for people to administer a Page using a fake account, which is strictly against our policies.”² (bolded words, mine)

Facebook does not exactly define what “large” means. There is no threshold to check.

You see, the pages my company manages don’t have large numbers of followers.

Again, we do not do this, and since it’s not relevant to me, I thought to ignore it.

I didn’t think we’ll be impacted. 

How to know you’re affected

There are four things I figured that might impact you, if you are a Facebook page admin:

First, if you are running Facebook ads, using a fake account, sooner or later, you will be affected.

Facebook wants real people running ads and managing pages. 

You see, Facebook wants to make sure that Page owners are who they say they are.  

Second, if you are managing pages that post political and social issues.

Third, you find out after the fact.

Well, as you already know, I was shut out.

No warning as to x number of days left for me to complete the authentication notification.

My team and I logged in one day and found out that we can’t post or engage using our clients’ Facebook advertising accounts. 

There were no instructions on what to do to complete publishing authorization; I had to look for the solution.

Fourth, if you admin any page, you could be affected.

So, if you see the Facebook page publishing authorization identity confirmation message alert, pay attention to it right away.

Drop whatever other tasks you’re doing. 

What happened when I got shut out from Facebook due to Facebook publishing authorization issues?

Our access to manage pages was restricted. Here are the activities that were impacted:

• We were “unable to post a comment” notification, then a pop up appeared that page publishing authorization is required.
• My team and I cannot use the Facebook Creator Studio.
• We were unable to post social media updates as managers of the business pages we manage.
• We can only leave “reactions” as engagement, nothing else.

You may have experienced other things, but these are what we went through for almost two weeks.

How to get your Facebook publishing authorization resolved?

In my case, the “page publishing authorization is required notification” showed up on my newsfeed.

Thinking that it will be there later in the notifications bar when I return, I clicked it off.

It should be there, right?

Oh boy, I was so wrong. I couldn’t find it in the notifications section. 

I spent hours looking for it or anything that has a resemblance of it.

Also, I searched for instructions inside professional Facebook groups and used the searched bar on Facebook to find help but zilch.

I also Googled it, but I couldn’t find any.

There were articles I read promised swiftness and simplicity of resolution, but none were helpful to me. 

I basically poked around my Facebook profile to verify my identity.  

Link to verify your Facebook publishing authorization verification

Yes, folks, there is only one link to get to the spot where you can verify your identity.

It is this link: facebook.com/ID.

Two options for your authentication process:

• Log in to the facebook.com/ID
• Under Settings, click General

That is where I found the publishing authorization process resolution that I did not find in my Facebook support inbox or anywhere else.

What’s next?

In my case, there were two options for the authorization process:

1. If you are managing political and social issues campaigns
2. Protect your account.

Since we do not run political campaigns, I selected “protect your account.”

By the way, when you are ready to authenticate with Facebook that you are who you say you are, double-check your profile information:

• A Facebook name matches your I.D. (I use my name but my birth name is also in Facebook)
• Your birthday is correct. If not, you can request to correct it.
• You must “tell” Facebook your primary country location. This information is public. So, make sure that your Facebook “About” section is updated.
• You must allow Facebook to track where you are posting from. To do that, you need to turn on the location services of your mobile device for Facebook in your privacy settings. Oh by the way, if you turn off the location for Facebook on your phone’s privacy settings, this is what Facebook says: “Keep in mind that if you turn off two-factor authentication or Location Services, you may be asked to complete the authorization process again.”
• If you use a VPN (a virtual private network) or something similar, that will not work.
• Set up your 2FA (two-factor authentication) for a better level of security. 

It will take time for Facebook to do this;so you will not be in the clear right away. At this point, you just have to wait.

Since I am already in this, I decided to go through their identification process for those managing political campaigns and social issues.

Identification process for page admins running political campaigns

This is what it says: “You might be asked to provide proof of your identity if you want to do things like run ads about social issues, elections, or politics. This is to help us ensure Facebook is a safe place for our whole community.”

The instructions here overlap with the publishing authorization requirements.

Facebooks’ Proof of Identity Requirement – Basic

You can submit either a passport or your driver’s license.

If submitting a driver’s license, which is what I did, Facebook requires submitting the front and back of your driver’s license separately. I submitted photos of it.

A few seconds later (Hello, Facebook bots!), I received a notification saying that it still can’t verify my identity, so it asked for another action step, a piece of additional information.

This time, it asked for a notarized “Affidavit of Identity.”

Facebook’s notarized affidavit of identity document and California law

Note by the way, if you are in California, the notary public will not sign the document provided by Facebook.

Why? Well, the notary public gave me the “it’s the California law” spiel. He really didn’t explain it.

So what happened?

The notary public stamped Facebook’s document with these texts, “see attached for notary public.”

I tried sending Facebook just the Facebook document stamped by the notary public, Facebook immediately rejected it. I guess it’s the ‘bots if it’s THAT quick, right?

Then, I also tried sending Facebook just the second page, which is the official California notary document. Facebook also rejected it.

There are no instructions on what exactly to submit.

The correct notarized document to submit to Facebook

I had both documents scanned into one file and sent it to Facebook – in this order:

1. The Facebook notary document; and,

2. The California public’s notarized document. 

This time, it accepted it!

What now?

Currently, I am only waiting for a letter in the mail from Facebook containing a code to verify my information so I can run political adverts – and manage organizations that post social issues. That hasn’t arrived yet, but I will update this blog when I complete that part of the process. 

References:

1. “Making Ads and Pages More Transparent,” April 6, 2018, accessed August 25, 2021. https://about.fb.com/news/2018/04/transparent-ads-and-pages/?ref=fbb_blog#

2. Ibid, accessed August 25, 2021

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