Users, customers and partners of mLabs (in addition to the platform itself), which provides social media management services, were surprised by the deactivation of the hardware on Facebook last Thursday (10/06). With the deactivation, all mLabs content was hidden on the social network, which means, among the most serious problems, the non-execution of one of the most important services offered by the platform.
Personal profiles of mLabs founders and administrators have also been deactivated
In note, mLabs sought to clarify that Facebook's action was unexpected, without prior warning or notice, deactivating and hiding posts from more than 330 thousand entrepreneurs, including old posts. To make matters even more serious, in the statement, mLabs informs that the social network deactivated the company's developer app, mLabs' business pages on Facebook (and its closed Facebook group) and also on Instagram. In addition, the profiles of the founders and administrators of the app's integration with Facebook were also deactivated, as reported in the note.
The statement records that something similar happened in 2019 (a video posted by the mLabs profile at the time can be seen here), with Facebook reinstating the company's clients' posts two days after the content was hidden. The platform reports that its app has been approved by the social network for six years and, throughout its note, reinforces that Facebook's action was arbitrary. The text also includes a request from mLabs for its clients, partners, followers and supporters to reinforce (through social network call center) the request that the platform has already made for the return of the content.
How mLabs works
The mLabs app allows companies and other entrepreneurs to schedule their posts on social media, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. The company's clients often schedule dates and times for posts with promotional content for their products. Marketing agencies marketing also use mLabs to schedule posts on their clients' social pages and collect engagement metrics.
One of mLabs' clients told us that, when looking for information about what is happening, he found that one of the problems may be related to the use of APIs (application programming interfaces) that extract information from user profiles to build metrics. For example, information about the number of visitors, clicks on posts and comments. For this client, what may be happening is an action by Facebook to curb tools that provide services very similar to those provided by Facebook Business.
What mLabs says
In response to the client's request, mLabs reported that it does not yet have this type of information, given that the company's team is investigating the reason why Facebook disabled the app. mLabs reiterated that the company was surprised by the unexpected action and, upon contacting its users and conducting an internal check, noticed that the platform's access to Facebook for actions such as connecting/renewing access permission, publishing schedules and publications that have already been made via mLabs are hidden on its clients' social networks. Therefore, the company is taking the appropriate measures and contacting Facebook USA. Facebook did not respond to our contacts by the time this article was published.
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