My Facebook page has disappeared - help please!

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zebedee
Posts: 1270
Joined: Fri Sep 12, 2014 2:57 pm
Location: yorkshire dales

My Facebook page has disappeared - help please!

Post by zebedee »

Firstly, apologies if this should be in another thread, but I couldn’t find any one that appeared relevant.

I do not have a personal Facebook page. I set up a Facebook page for my cottage many years ago, and at the time, from what I read (before I had heard of LMH) I needed to set up a business page. However, I have always been conscious that over time the business page has limitations, but that’s another story.

I haven’t posted for a couple of months, but tried to put a post on my page yesterday and was told (even though I pressed publish) that only I could see the post. I had a good search round yesterday but could not find what I had done wrong, or what settings had been changed.
Today, I tried to log in again, and now my page is not showing, but very interestingly a blank page comes up which has my date of birth on it, and clearly Facebook is expecting me to register myself.
I really am not confident in understanding how to control my privacy (which is why I don’t have a personal page, and now that Facebook seem to be tracking me down, my fears and paranoia are confirmed!)

What has happened to my cottage page please, and why? What do I need to do to get the page up and visible again.

I know you are all social media savvy readers who will be giggling at my complete idiocy, but please be gentle in your replies, any help would be gratefully received! Words of one syllable answers would be most helpful.
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GRL
Posts: 821
Joined: Fri Sep 12, 2014 4:31 pm

Post by GRL »

You really needed to have set up your business Facebook page from a personal page. The 2 remain separate and you can completely lock down your personal page if you are concerned about privacy. All the time when you had a "stand alone" FB page, any comment you made on any other page would only have been visible to you, not the owner of the page or anyone else reading it.

My advice would be to accept you made a FB error, set up a personal page with maximum privacy settings and then set up a business page from that. You can use a dedicated email address that you do not use for anything else (such as banking) and a strong password. Once in FB you can set all your privacy settings to the most private so people will not be able to find you! You never need to use your personal page but if you wanted to join any groups of any sort then you need to do this as your personal page. Oh and join with a real name as FB does not allow personal FB pages to be in the name of businesses.

It may be possible to claim your original page but this sounds unlikely given that you cannot now find it but in all honesty you might be better starting again. I did the same thing, setting up a stand alone page and it took me ages to understand why no-one ever responded to my comments on other pages! I just dumped it and started again. As for why FB appears to know your age, might you have added this info at some point? I would not be too paranoid about FB snooping if you never use your personal page there will be noting for them to snoop around.
zebedee
Posts: 1270
Joined: Fri Sep 12, 2014 2:57 pm
Location: yorkshire dales

Post by zebedee »

Thanks Rosie.
Until now, my cottage Facebook page has been visible to everyone. I have had posts viewed numbers showing, friend requests and personal friends copying and forwarding on when I have posted about availability deals.
It’s probably 10 years since I set the page up, and I couldn’t find anything at the time in the way of guidance on Facebook other than that I should use a business page.

I know things have changed several times since then, but as I don’t have a personal page I have never gotten to grips with it.
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GRL
Posts: 821
Joined: Fri Sep 12, 2014 4:31 pm

Post by GRL »

Yes, your cottage page would have been visible to people to comment on/share etc but any posts you would have made as your page on any other page would not have been visible.

It is a pain the way FB changes things and I have certainly noticed a tightening up of things they do not like eg pages set up like yours, personal pages set up under business names etc. It is really frustrating but I suppose we have to remember that FB is free for businesses to use and so we must accept that it is FB who sets the rules and we need to follow them, however unfair they seem.

Did you page have many followers?
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Nemo
Posts: 7062
Joined: Thu Aug 14, 2008 10:15 am
Location: Norfolk

Post by Nemo »

If you can find a way of contacting facebook, you can request to change the personal profile you've been using to a business page. If you can still access it, you may be able to do it yourself. https://www.facebook.com/pages/create/migrate

Ditto everything Rosie has said, you can completely control your personal account to mean that no-one outside any friend that you choose to add can see anything you post.
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