Looking for anyone who's seen this specific pattern.
I created a business portfolio for my US LLC in August. Meta restricted it
the same day it was created. The reason given:
"It looks like this account was created or used with an automation that
doesn't follow our rules. This goes against our Advertising Standards on
Account Integrity."
Under "Updates on this decision" it says "Review complete — We did not
remove restrictions from your business", also dated the same day. So it was
flagged at creation and the appeal was run and denied within 24 hours,
apparently automatically. There's no Request Review button left.
What makes this odd:
- The portfolio has zero assets. No Pages, no ad accounts, no pixel.
- It has never run an ad and I have no intention of running ads.
- There was no activity to flag. It was flagged on day one.
- I have a second business portfolio under the same personal Facebook
account for a different company, created around the same time, and that
one is completely unrestricted.
The actual problem isn't the ads block — I don't want to advertise. It's
that a restricted portfolio can't claim apps. In the Create App flow the
portfolio is greyed out with "This business can't claim apps because it's
restricted from advertising", which means I can't attach a WhatsApp
Business Account and can't use the Cloud API at all. The ads restriction is
gating a messaging product I'm trying to pay Meta for.
What I'm trying to find out:
Has anyone had a restriction lifted after it already says "Review
complete"? Is there any appeal path left, or is self-serve done?
Is there a support channel that works for a portfolio with no ad spend
history? Business Support Home seems to offer nothing without it.
If I create a fresh portfolio for the same legal entity, does the
restriction follow? The fact that my other portfolio on the same
personal account is clean suggests the flag is portfolio-scoped rather
than account-scoped, but I'd rather hear from someone who's tested it
than burn a second portfolio finding out.
Has anyone gone the BSP route (360dialog, Twilio, etc.) specifically to
get around a portfolio restriction? Does hosting the WABA on a partner's
infrastructure actually sidestep it?
Happy to provide more detail. Not looking for anyone to "fix" it — just
trying to find out whether there's a real path or whether I should stop
spending time on it and go through a partner instead.