Is My Facebook Contest Legal? #Infographic

Rebecca Coleman

8 years ago

There’s no denying that Facebook Contests are a great way to drive up your page’s likes and to increase its engagement and reach.

Basically, at the end of the day, people just really love getting stuff for free. And if you don’t make it too complicated for them to enter, they likely will.

But you may not be aware that there are rules about how you are allowed to run a Facebook contest.

I bring it up, because I’ve been seeing a ton of contests like this one:

Facebook Page admins are posting contests, and in order to enter, are asking you to share the post to your personal FB account.

These kinds of contests are against Facebook’s Terms of Service.

Let’s have a look at their rules:

1. If you use Facebook to communicate or administer a promotion (ex: a contest or sweepstakes), you are responsible for the lawful operation of that promotion, including:

a.   The official rules;

b.   Offer terms and eligibility requirements (ex: age and residency restrictions); and

c.   Compliance with applicable rules and regulations governing the promotion and all prizes offered (ex: registration and obtaining necessary regulatory approvals)

2. Promotions on Facebook must include the following:

a.   A complete release of Facebook by each entrant or participant.

b.   Acknowledgement that the promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook.

3. Promotions may be administered on Pages or within apps on Facebook. Personal Timelines and friend connections must not be used to administer promotions (ex: “share on your Timeline to enter” or “share on your friend’s Timeline to get additional entries”, and “tag your friends in this post to enter” are not permitted).

4. We will not assist you in the administration of your promotion, and you agree that if you use our service to administer your promotion, you do so at your own risk.

The key line here is this: Personal Timelines and friend connections must not be used to administer promotions (ex: “share on your Timeline to enter” or “share on your friend’s Timeline to get additional entries”, and “tag your friends in this post to enter” are not permitted).

The reason for this is pretty simple: it’s about privacy settings. All Facebook business pages are public, but many personal accounts are not, making them much more challenging to ensure they complied with the contest rules and it’s also a lot tougher to contact them.

You also cannot make it a condition of the contest that they “like” your page. This is called “like-gating,” and Facebook did away with that a few years ago.

So, how can you run a legal Facebook giveaway?

Check out this skookum Infographic:

Infographic courtesy of ShortStack

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