While Facebook has changed some of its policies in recent months in the wake of scandals, Hayride Scandal owner Rob Powell didn’t expect to get pushback for the content of an ad he bought promoting free red beans and rice at his whiskey and craft cocktail bar.
But two days after buying a $500 ad on Facebook last week—“Monday blues? We’ve got a cure. FREE Red Beans and Rice While it lasts”— the company sent Powell a rejection message telling him his ad doesn’t follow the company’s advertising policies.
Powell says he can’t figure out how a post promoting free red beans and rice violates Facebook policy, which, according to the company’s form email doesn’t allow ads that “use profanity, or refer to the viewer’s attributes (ex.: race, ethnicity, age, secular orientation, name) or harass viewers.”
“I don’t know what kind of algorithm would flag red beans,” he says. “Perhaps it has a problem with cocktails? Or the word hayride? Your mind starts to wander.”
Powell says he appealed to Facebook online after the first rejection notice and was rejected a second time.
In its response, Facebook recommends: “… focusing on your product or service, rather than the audience and/or removing the profanity from your ad and/or destination it links to.”
Powell says he’s not sure what to do since he can’t figure out what the problem is, and he describes the situation as baffling and funny, if not somewhat maddening.
“You can’t make this stuff up,” he says. “We could understand, maybe it was flagged by an algorithm but this is baffling. Even after two appeals. And we wonder why their stock is tumbling.”
Powell says Hayride Scandal will continue to offer free red beans and rice on Monday, and he says for now, at least, he’ll post it on the bar’s Facebook page—for free.
Facebook could not be reached for comment prior to publication.
