Over 50 per cent of Australian business’s Facebook pages are at risk of being deactivated after breaching Facebook’s new competition guidelines.

The guidelines

Facebook’s promotion guidelines, which include competitions and sweepstakes, have been in place since 2010 and remove all involvement and liability on Facebook’s behalf.

Under these new rules, competitions cannot be run straight from a business’s Facebook page and must be administered by a third party application.

Competition winners can not be announced on the company’s Facebook page, and businesses are also responsible for any content that the third party application publishes on their behalf.

As well as Facebook’s stringent guidelines, businesses must also adhere to any state and territory laws that revolve around the platform and how businesses engage with their users.

You have not won

Despite Facebook announcing these updates, it seems many Australian companies are unaware, or not complying with the new guidelines.

As a result, many Australian businesses are now running competitions illegally on their Facebook pages and could be deactivated at any time, losing their entire Facebook social network.

Dislike

Many high profile companies have faced the wrath of Facebook already in India, including FCUK and Cadbury, resulting in loss of company time and money rebuilding their Faceook page and user base.

News.com.au spoke to Jamie White of Pod Legal who avised that Facebook has shown it is prepared to take down pages that don't comply with its guidelines, no matter how high-profile the brand is.

“Facebook has already taken down pages that broke the regulations in the US. If your page is taken down it can be a big problem to re-build your social media community again,” said Mr White.

To read about Facebook's new terms and conditions click here.

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