The Mysterious Workings (and Non-Workings) of Facebook!

It's 41 days in our Countdown to the 20th Anniversary Celebration of Garden Faire at Bulloch Hall on April 27 from 9am to 4pm. On Thursday morning (March 14) our 2019 Garden Faire at Bulloch Hall Facebook event suddenly DISAPPEARED. Ouch! Nearly 1100 people were going or interested in our event and 50 posts welcoming vendors and thanking media had been made since the event creation in August. I sent a report to Facebook and even messaged Facebook AND Mark Zuckerberg but no response! Not sure if the random disappearing Facebook event was a result of the Facebook outage on Wednesday/Thursday, a purposeful hack, or a Facebook problem.

When you click on the event link, this is what you now see.

I Googled the issue of disappearing Facebook events and it appears to have happened to many others. I couldn't find a solution online and neither could others. I couldn't find a way to call or chat with a real live person from Facebook either!

This morning, I clicked on my Facebook's Quick Help (a misnomer as I haven't received any help nor has it been quick!) and then accessed my Support Inbox. I found a Facebook response to my March 14 report which doesn't really solve the problem, does it? Basically, I was thanked for taking the time to report the disappearing event (clicked on Report A Problem under Quick Help) and told my Feedback will improve Facebook.

To my surprise, I also found that my March 9 sharing of the 2019 Garden Faire at Bulloch Hall Facebook event page to my personal timeline had been deemed spam and in violation of community standards. So I clicked the button to let them know it was not spam. Since I can see the event here, I would hope that Facebook can retrieve the event with all the posts if only I could get thru to a live person.

Since the 2019 Garden Faire at Bulloch Hall Facebook event has not magically re-appeared nor has Facebook responded with any hopeful or useful information about how to retrieve the missing 2019 Garden Faire Facebook event, I decided to bite the bullet and just recreate the event this morning.

But guess what? Facebook will not let me publish nor even save a draft for a new Facebook event. I tried twice. Here is the error message I get. Facebook, what is happening here?

Just 30 minutes ago, I dutifully made a second report about our our missing Garden Faire Facebook event and that I am now unable to create a new event. I see that Facebook has already thanked me and assured me that my feedback will be used to improve Facebook!

What I need is TRUE SUPPORT from Facebook not auto responses. I need to talk to a tech support human at Facebook to find out if our missing Garden Faire Facebook event can be retrieved with our 1100 followers and the 50 posts.

Facebook events are an important way for non-profit organizations and others to promote events. But when your event goes AWOL it is extremely frustrating. Unfortunately, some of our followers thought that Garden Faire was cancelled but rest assured that the North Fulton Master Gardeners will be celebrating our 20th anniversary of Garden Faire at Bulloch Hall on April 27.

If anyone out there knows a way I can get help from Facebook or has a contact for me, please Facebook message me at North Fulton Master Gardener. Please message Facebook and ask where the 2019 Garden Faire at Bulloch Hall Facebook event went.

Good news: The Patch event for the 2019 Garden Faire at Bulloch Hall is published with no problems nor disappearing acts!

Bottom line: The 20th anniversary celebration of Garden Faire has not disappeared and will be stronger than ever. Stay tuned to North Fulton Master Gardeners to learn whether Facebook is able to retrieve the original Facebook event or allows us to recreate a new Facebook event. See you April 27 at Garden Faire. Spread the news to your family, friends and neighbors who like to play in the dirt!

March 23 Update: Still no response from Facebook, even after I LinkedIn messaged about 10 upper management Facebook folks including the Client Solutions Manager! Our original Facebook event page has not been restored. Several days ago I was able to create a new Facebook page, 2019 Garden Faire at Bulloch Hall - 20th Anniversary. I figured out that Facebook doesn't like the Google Form links that we used for vendor registration. Once I deleted this link no problem creating a new Facebook event. We still would like our original Facebook 2019 Garden Faire at Bulloch Hall event restored. We will be happy to remove the Google Form link if that is the reason that Facebook removed our original event. Just wondering why we never got notification if there was an issue. Hopefully, one day a real live Facebook human will respond!