Firearm Advertising on Facebook
– Firearm advertising on facebook:
So, Facebook just updated their polices again regarding firearm groups/ pages and pretty much all content that’s firearm-related. With this new “update”, FB went on another banning spree and from what we know so far, 50+ firearm groups have been deleted without warning or a chance for appeal. This is nothing new if you’ve been on FB as a pro 2nd supporter or ran your own firearm groups. However, this does beg the age-long question: What Exactly are Facebook’s Policies on Firearms? We know that Facebook doesn’t allow the buying, selling and trading of firearms HOWEVER, to what extend does this rule apply to? Most Facebook firearm groups now does nothing but post and share images/ blogs related to firearms for the purpose of creating CONTENT, and those are the exact kind of groups that got deleted. In this blog, we want to share our experience with Facebook as Auction Armory and hopefully enlighten everyone to the truth behind Facebook’s gun policy.
Spoiler: It’s not about the policies.
We’ve been working with an insider in the Facebook’s advertising department; the purpose of the department is to review ad promotions on FB and to either approve or deny the promotions. If you ever tried to run an ad promotion on FB with anything that’s even remotely related to firearms by the farthest stretch, I guarantee that your promotion was denied. Their reason: This COULD lead to the sale of firearms, therefore you can’t promote it. Now, this is where things can get a bit muddy, and a lot of times you can catch FB’s INCONSISTENCY with their gun policies; it’s almost like they’re just making stuff up as they go along.
I think Auction Armory was one of the very few firearm-related companies that was able to run a few successful FB ad promotions and this is how we did it.
1. We setup our Auction Armory FB page to EXACTLY how FB want a firearm page to setup; we even had our insider who’s working in the advertising department walk us through step-by-step.
2. Sorry, but just by simply setting up your page according to FB’s rules doesn’t actually mean anything. You can literally follow their rules down to every single detail and it still won’t matter. Your promotion still won’t be approved and your page/ group still risks deletion.
3. The real reason that we were able to run our promotions was because we had help from the insider. This person handled our account and personally approved those promotions for us WITHOUT notifying the supervisors. Why? Because this person was a fan of the 2nd amendment and yes what this person did is against FB’s “policies” but approved our promotions anyway because we did follow the policies.
We ran two ad campaigns and within 2 weeks the campaign was taken down because it got reported over 5,000 times in the span of two weeks. The campaign was only shown to people with specific interests (like…guns…) so how could the campaign get so many reports? We have a few theories but more likely than not it’s from jealous competitors, people in general who’s not used to seeing this kind of promotion because there’s never been any that got approved OR FB was lying to us about the number of reports.
We were able to get the campaign back up and running but it got taken down again because it got another 5,000+ reports. We tried to get the campaign to run again and finish the duration but that’s when shit hit the fan.
The supervisor of the advertising department found out that our insider has been helping us. Immediately after, all of our active and non-active campaigns were denied and our FB page was flagged. What followed was the spree that removed 50+ firearm groups. Explanation? FB “updated their gun policy”.
Another unpredictable event happened in the advertising department. Apparently 4 employees quit (Not fired, quit) the department because of this new “update”. Do you think they’re supporters of the 2nd amendment? Yes, absolutely. They were the people like our insider who were approving firearm-related promotions that followed the policies. While we don’t know the exact reason for them quitting, I think it’s fair to deduce that they were fed up with the inconsistency of FB’s policies or to be more frank, they were fed up with FB’s bulls**t.
Do you see what’s happening now? FB is on a mission to get rid of all firearm-related content, whether it’s groups, pages or even your personal profile; no one is safe and no one will be exempt. While not all people working at FB are “libtards”, the ones that support the 2nd are powerless because there’s nothing that they can do to help, they can only try to help.
If you’re still running a firearm group on FB or know someone that is, please keep in mind that your group WILL be deleted, it’s just a matter of when and when it hits you, you will be powerless to do anything against it like the rest of us. So my question to you is: Why are you still on/using Facebook? It doesn’t matter how big your group is, even if it’s got hundred and thousands of members, it will be gone in a second. Rather than keep doing the same thing and knowing the result, why not try something different?
This is one of the main reasons that we created Auction Armory. We created our own Social Network Dedicated to Firearms. We’re everything that FB isn’t. We believe that your right to the 2nd should never be infringed upon, whether in real life or online. You want to buy, sell and trade firearms legally? We got you. You want to create groups for anything firearm-related? We got you. You want to promote your store and products? We got you. You want to connect with gun-lovers from around the country? We got you! We provide all of our services 100% free except advertising, which will be our only source of income.
In the light of this new FB “policy update”, I urge all you group admins/ members to stop wasting time with FB and check us out. We’re still a fairly new network but growing at a remarkable rate. Our mission is simple: To create a firearm social network. To become the Largest Firearm Social Network. We want to help everyone in the firearm community and industry.
With that, I want to thank you for your time and please don’t hesitate to reach out to us if you have any kind of questions.
P.S. I won’t be surprised if FB deletes our FB page because of this, but this is something very important that we, Auction Armory must share with everyone.
Side note, want to read more about the advertising policies for firearms on facebook.
Stay Strapped and God Bless.
It’s about to go down
SMH!
Yep, FB alrdy started denying our ads to our stories on “Jeff Cooper”.
They deleted my group “Girls & Guns” of 100K plus members and blocked me from send messages. It’s like they don’t give a shit anymore :/
FB is not pretending anymore. They are showing their true colors.
I gave on FB long ago this just confirms that it’s not getting better.
@xuan “the truth is we had an insider” that’s only the start. I thought if you were going to title this the”auction armory story” you would tell the whole story. You’re only telling a 3rd of the story or what you want us to know, we’re not idiots.
Said the insider is a 2nd amendment supporter. More like buddy’s with the president of auction armory. Come on! You are the ONLY gun company allowed to advertise on there network. Give us a break
@jason_robbins This is the whole story. No one is our “buddy” inside FB. We just didn’t give up and kept trying to make things work. We spent hours on the phone talking with them. Instead of just straight up telling them to f**k off, we showed them respect and showed them that we’re willing to follow whatever they need us to do to get our promotion running. Also, did you miss the part about the person handling our account helped us without telling the supervisor? This person risked a lot to help us not because we’re buddies, but because it was the right thing to do. Like I said, not everyone working at FB is a “libtard” but most of them are not in a position to help. Did you also miss the part about 4 people quit FB advertising department? Everything I wrote is the truth and Auction Armory has nothing to hide. NO ONE ELSE will tell you the things that I wrote in the article. So don’t be an idiot, you need to keep an open mind.
Our original training company, Pandion Tactical, had about 17,000 followers a couple years ago on FB. Then they changed their policy and no one could view our posts… at that time we closed everything with FB. We do have a FB page for The Fortis Project, but I don’t actually post anything, anything added to that feed is a linked post from Instagram. Auction Armory, you need to find a way to have cross reference posting with IG.
@kevin_byrd Since FB owns Instagram as well they are enforcing the same “policies” although it is just as inconsistent as FB. I’ve seen firearm ig accounts posting gun images with obvious captions to try to sell the gun and nothing happens to the post or their account. I’ve also seen accounts that posts normal firearm content within ig’s policies and gets deleted for no reason. I do think there’s a lot of things happening behind the scenes that we don’t know about but from what I’ve seen so far, we need to be cautious of not only FB and Ig, but competitions within the firearm industry as well.
@kevin_byrd Also, once FB flags your page, it will greatly restrict the reach and views of your posts. You won’t be able to un-flag the page, the only thing you can do is create a new FB page but they’ll just flag it again.
Keep telling yourself that. I’m one of the investors at gunbroker ever heard of us? We tried for years and years and are still trying. You guys have been around for what a few months. I know there’s more to this you just don’t want to say anything.
Good to see Gunbroker on here. If you guys ever need help we’re here 🙂
I guess you also don’t care how you make the company look? Running around on other firearm websites flaming people. A real class act.
Shit just got good. @jason_robbins
@mark_zuckerberg might have a few notes to add.. haha
Can’t believe the real Mark Zuckerberg joined us.
I was told that there New York office went on a firing spree crazy