In September of 2025, my work is generating the most income it ever has in my career. Yet, I'm being forced to shut down my successul operation, against my will, due to one cause alone: 95% of that revenue is being stolen by piracy and copyright infringement. I've lost more than $1 million to copyright infringement in the last 15 years, and it's finally brought an end to my professional storm chasing operation. Do not be misled by the lies of infringers, anti-copyright activists and organized piracy cartels. This page is a detailed, evidenced account of my battle I had to undertake to just barely stay in business, and eventually could not overcome. It's a problem faced by all of my colleagues and most other creators in the field.
Hopefully this post will help others solve a major headache. Part of my job is managing multiple Facebook pages for businesses and organizations, as well as two pages of my own. For the past couple of months, the admin functions of all of the pages I manage began slowing down. The problem worsened over the course of time, and several bugs began popping up.
I had the following issues:
Very slow page loading and admin function loading.
The posting dialog (the box where you type a status/add a photo, etc) was taking up to 30 seconds to load.
Posts took a long time to record, and the dialog would hang/lock up without displaying the finished post. I had to refresh the page to confirm that items posted.
Preview thumbails did not work for links and video links.
The 'schedule posts' button did not work (nothing happened when it was clicked)
Only the first 2 to 4 posts on a page would load.
I tried the following troubleshooting actions to no avail:
I tried opening the pages in every browser I had on my desktop pc, my laptop, my Android tablet and my phone (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, IE, Opera) to rule out a browser issue.
I disabled all browser plugins and add-ons.
I cleared my Windows hosts file to ensure no Facebook function was being blocked.
I used both my home cable internet and my cellular aircard connection to rule out an ISP-based problem.
The problem persisted. What was normally a quick 10-second post was taking 3 minutes or more every time, every day. Between all of the pages I'm responsible for, I make many posts a day, so this was a significant issue - particularly the lack of ability to schedule posts.
I finally posted a question to Facebook's help forums, which after about a week, revealed the source of the problem. Someone discovered that when you opened or re-activated your Facebook advertising account (which requires adding a valid payment method, either credit card or Paypal), the problems vanished. I tried the solution, and it worked for me.
While at least Facebook isn't requiring pages to actually spend money on ads to regain the functionality (for now), it's disturbing that they are apparently deliberately crippling pages for those who don't have active ad accounts.
The link above goes to the help forum thread on the issue. That will probably be taken down at some point, but I've archived the thread in case that occurs.
Web Site Design and Internet Marketing by CIS Internet
From Dan: Please Read
To my regular readers, I offer my apologies for this heavy-handed notice. Unfortunately it has become necessary, so please bear with me!
Please don't copy/upload this site's content to social media or other web sites. Those copies have been a critical problem for me, seriously harming this site and my photography/storm chasing operation by diverting traffic, viewers, engagement and income. "Credit" and "exposure" does not benefit this site or my operation, rather they threaten my ability to cover my operating expenses. Please read my full explanation for this notice here.
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