Facebook is full of competitions, but many of them are fakes created by data collectors!
Even reputable sites sometimes organize competitions, which unfortunately do not adhere to Facebook guidelines. This makes them appear dubious and, in the worst case, runs the risk of being completely deleted by Facebook.
A user sent us a screenshot of the competition from a reputable site. The problem: Although many points are adhered to, for example it is not allowed to tag friends!

In the following we would like to show how you can recognize serious competitions. This can also be helpful if you want to organize a competition yourself as a page without violating Facebook guidelines, which are often quite complicated.
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What is a competition allowed and what is not?
Unfortunately, reputable competition operators often fall into the trap of setting conditions of participation that are not permitted by Facebook.
That's why we want to show exactly what has to be, what can be and what is not allowed at all!
The short form
Allowed:
- The page and the competition must be liked and/or commented on
- The site may ask for images and/or text to be posted on the site (e.g. “Post your best image with product XYZ here”)
- The site may request that you send it a private message (for example, “Send us your favorite vacation experience via PM”)
- An image or text with the most likes wins
Forbidden:
- The site may not require that the competition be shared! Allowed: “If you want, you can share the competition”. Prohibited: “Share the competition to enter”.
- The site may not require that friends be tagged in the comments in order to participate
- The site itself is also not allowed to tag users in order to lure them to the site
- The site may not ask you to post a specific image or post (example: “Every user who posts our logo takes part”)
- active consent is required to take part in a competition
No rule without exception, as “ Basic Thinking ” reports:
For example, in a photo with many people in it, you can be asked yourself , á la “Everyone who finds themselves in the photo and tags them wins.” The page itself may not tag anyone, nor may it be asked to tag users who are not even visible in the photo.
The Facebook regulations
Facebook has clear regulations when it comes to competitions. We would like to list these here in key words:
- Pages, groups and events must not be misleading, fraudulent or deceptive.
- Pages, groups, and events may not impersonate or misrepresent any brand, company, or public figure. For example, fan pages of certain people or companies must clearly (!) make it clear that it is not the person or company itself
- Games of chance must be approved in writing by Facebook and are subject to the respective restrictions of the country (in Germany, for example, according to § 284 StGB )
- Pages, groups, and events may not falsely tag content or encourage users to mistag content
- Pages, groups and events must not encourage abuse of Facebook features (example: “Rate our page 5 stars to participate”)
- Pages, groups and events must clearly state in their competitions that the competition has no connection to Facebook (“Disclaimer”)
You can view the regulations in detail in the Facebook guidelines .
Legal requirements
There are also some legal requirements that must be observed for a valid competition.
A must is often the restriction of the participants .
For example, if a car is being raffled off, it must be made clear that only users over 18 and with a valid driver's license are allowed to take part. This may go without saying, but it still needs to be mentioned so that, for example, the 12-year-old son doesn't join in to win the car for his father.
also makes sense to restrict the competition with the following points in order to be legally on the safe side:
- Start and end of the competition
- Exact description of the price, including possible additional costs (example: transport costs for a car)
- Time of the raffle
- Exact description of how to win
- Description of how to get the prize then
- Reservation clause and data protection information
The topic of data protection is particularly sensitive: you can't simply write that all participants will receive a newsletter at the same time, because that requires explicit consent! It must also be made clear that the data will only be used for the competition. Passing on the data, for example to sponsors, must be explicitly agreed to!
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Summary
You will have noticed that most dubious competitions on Facebook, in which you can win cars, houses, smartphones and kitchen appliances, in which you supposedly only have to like and share to take part, fail due to these requirements.
There are many points to consider, both from a Facebook and legal perspective. Large companies have lawyers to protect themselves legally in advance against problems such as disruption of the competition or abuse of participation. As a small business or simple fan site, there are many hurdles to overcome.
You may not want to host a competition yourself. If so, you now at least know the most important points. In addition, you can now see much better whether a competition is really real or just a fake, because the fake competitions hardly take any of the points mentioned above into account!
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Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )


Article image: Shutterstock / By Kaspars Grinvalds