Hillsdale’s difficulties with Meta continue as the social media site has restricted college Facebook advertisements.

Meta has removed previously reported warnings blocking Hillsdale College-related pages, but the social media site has now suspended the college’s main ad account on Facebook, according to Hillsdale’s Executive Director of Digital Content Bill Zeiser. 

Facebook users searching for “Hillsdale College Online Courses” earlier this month received a warning from the social media site claiming potential association with the sale of drugs, the college said in a press release Sept. 6. Pages tagged with the warning included those of local businesses in the city of Hillsdale as well as several college-related accounts. 

“​​It is a shame that these issues spilled over into temporarily preventing anyone from searching for the word ‘Hillsdale,’” Zeiser said. “This harmed not only the college, but businesses like Hillsdale Craft Supply. It even prevented people from finding the schedule for the Hillsdale County Fair days before its start.”

All accounts with the term “hillsdale” in the title were placed on a white list Sept. 20 and will no longer trigger the warning that the term may be associated with the sale of drugs, according to a statement the college received from Meta. 

In a recent development, the college’s main Facebook account does not appear when an account with no search history involving Hillsdale searches for “hillsdale college,” according to Zeiser.

Hillsdale has received no explanation from Meta regarding this issue, Zeiser said.

Ad Account

Hillsdale’s main advertising account has been suspended since Sept. 11, according to Director of Digital Marketing Amy Watson.

“Each of our organic pages that are larger have an ads account associated with them,” Watson said. “So our main Hillsdale Facebook page has an ad account associated with it. Our agencies as well as our internal people run ads through that account, and that has been suspended.”

The college has been attempting to resolve its issues with Facebook by working with a designated representative at Meta but is not receiving the treatment a substantial customer should expect, according to Zeiser.

“Our representative often passes questions on to people in other departments within Facebook who provide vague and unsatisfactory answers,” Zeiser said. “For instance, a Facebook employee recently told us that the college is banned from purchasing ads because our page has promoted misinformation. When we asked for clarification on what misinformation we allegedly promoted, we were told that Facebook does not have the resources to provide an answer, but that the ban is permanent. That is outrageous, and we are still working with our representative in hopes of a resolution.”

Social Media Manager Carla Spielman said she asked the escalations representative at Meta for details and examples as to why the ad account was restricted.

“I have raised this to our internal team and requested more information on the specific ads involved in this matter and the reason why your page was tagged as repeat offender,” a Meta agent said in an email to the college. “Due to limited resources, they were unable to provide me with the details you were looking for. I understand that this is not the resolution that you’re expecting. Please know that we continue to improve our support.”

Meta gave no specifics on why the advertisements were objectionable, according to Director of Online Learning for Marketing Juan Davalos. Instead, the company proposed to Hillsdale that representatives from the college marketing department attend a training with Meta to learn why the ads were restricted and what to do differently with new ads moving forward.

“The college has an important mission to reach as many people as we can with the ideas that we think are necessary for happy republican citizenship, and that’s why we offer the courses for free,” Davalos said. “Some of the main ways we reach people is by email, but social media plays a huge part in that.”

Facebook is one of the main social media platforms the college uses to reach people with advertising, Davalos said, and Hillsdale has not experienced problems with Meta in the past.

“It’s always challenging to continue fulfilling our mission when we have these obstacles we need to overcome,” he said.

The college has now agreed to meet with the social media company to discuss advertising on a quarterly basis, Davalos said.

“I hope that we can come to a good solution,” he said. “What we want to do is have people learning, but we don’t want to compromise our message either. We need to find a balance so we can speak truthfully, but at the same time do it in a way that we can share it on Meta because that’s such a huge source of traffic for us.”

Drug Warning

An agent from Meta suggested the artificial intelligence search engine on Facebook may be responsible for flagging account searches including the term “hillsdale” as drug-related because the company is training the AI to flag certain terms, according to Spielman.

The warning blocked Facebook and Instagram users from viewing flagged profiles. An agent from Meta suggested that the letters “lsd” in the name of the college triggered the drug warning, according to Watson, and encouraged changing the page name to “Hills dale Online Courses.”

The list of college accounts blocked by the warning includes: Hillsdale College, Tower Players of Hillsdale College, Hillsdale Action Shooting, Hillsdale College Shotgun Sports Team, Hillsdale College Charger Athletics, Hillsdale College Women’s Basketball, Hillsdale College Volleyball, Chargers Softball, Hillsdale Basketball (Men’s), Hillsdale College Men’s Tennis, Hillsdale Chargers Baseball, Hillsdale College Track & Field, and Hillsdale College Women Commissioners.

When Facebook users searched for these pages, the site blocked the page and displayed a warning.

“The term you searched for is sometimes associated with the sale of drugs, which isn’t allowed on Facebook,” the warning said. “If you or someone you know struggle with drug misuse, there are organizations that can help.”

The drug warnings associated with the search term “hillsdale” were not limited to college accounts, according to Hillsdale Craft Supply owner Schelesia “Shelly” Mangus. 

Mangus said the Facebook account for her business received the warning on July 30, and the problem persisted until Sept. 18. She said she continued to post from her personal account in an attempt to reach her customers.

Customers depend on Facebook to see that her business is open, Mangus said. When the warning appeared on her account, she said her sales dropped from $900 per day to $100-$125 per day. 

“I have a website, but they don’t go to that website,” Mangus said. “Everybody is addicted to Facebook. And if your Facebook goes down, you lose the communication with the customer.”

When she inquired about the problem, a Meta tech support bot told her the words “supply” and “addicted” in her Facebook profile had triggered the warning, Mangus said.

Thinking she would have to close her business after the problem persisted for six weeks, Mangus said she called and filed a complaint with a U.S. senator to inquire into the issue. It was then resolved within 24 hours, she said.

“If I lose this business, I lose everything,” Mangus said. “If I lose this business, I lose my house. I hawked my house to stay open during COVID, so if I can’t keep the doors open, I lose it all and live in my car.”

Dena Ruschton, who works in the Hillsdale County Fair office, said the fair’s Facebook account — where the schedule for the fair is posted — was blocked by the same warning until days before the fair opened. 

Online Courses Page Removal

The Facebook advertising difficulties follow an incident in August when Meta took down the Hillsdale College Online Courses Facebook account for four days at the launch of a new class. Enrollment in online classes dropped to 4,500 over those four days, down 25% from the projected number of enrollments for that period, according to Davalos.

About 25% of traffic for new online courses accounts comes from Facebook and Instagram, according to Davalos, and the college normally sees an average of 2,000 new accounts per day when launching a new online class. 

Meta claimed taking down the account was a mistake, Executive Director of Online Learning Jeremiah Regan previously told The Collegian. 

Davalos said the college hopes to resolve the current difficulties with Meta.

“Facebook’s ongoing suppression of Hillsdale’s pages and its ability to advertise is hindering the college’s educational mission,” Zeiser said. “Facebook ads are particularly helpful in enrolling new students in Hillsdale’s online courses and in helping people to get to know about the college. We are now operating in a climate of uncertainty as to whether Facebook will once again arbitrarily remove or otherwise limit access to our pages.”