Is it possible to ban a group in contact. For what offenses could you be blocked by VKontakte?

Of course, it is very unpleasant when you go into community, which they themselves created, raised themselves and you see the inscription “ community is blocked". But fortunately for you, there is a high probability of avoiding an eternal ban from a group (or public). Usually, VKontkate support goes to the meeting and forgives the first time because... It will not be beneficial for them if social network users lose a group that is interesting to them.

It’s another matter if you were doing something that is unacceptable on any Internet resource. For example, pedophilia, sale and advertising of drugs, racism, regular insult to the feelings of believers, etc.

By the way, blocking personal page happens according to the same principle. If you don't do anything prohibited, then you have nothing to fear, but there is one limitation for personal pages. Have you noticed that groups with pornographic content and even groups with light erotica or any other material for persons 18+ are closed, and in the group description there is a warning that persons under 18 years of age will be denied an application to join the group? If the group is open to everyone, it will most likely receive a ban, and by making the group closed, the owners of such communities bypass the rules of VK, which clearly state that the content should not contradict the laws of the Russian Federation, and in this case, the publication of material for people who do not meet age restrictions . It is not possible to set such a restriction for personal pages, so pages with hardcore porn are deleted.

In fact, this topic is very vast and has many tricks and ways to avoid personal page ban and groups, but today we will only look at the main ones reasons for blocking communities.

Why VKontakte groups are blocked:

If the community was blocked for cheating, which means that the first warning has already been given. Usually, when you cheat, some of the bots are written off, but not immediately, but after a week or even a month. Cheating through various exchanges for exchanging likes is the riskiest way to promote a community. Not even because they may suspect unrealistic activity, when a zero group with one post in the feed becomes ten thousand members in a week, then this is an almost 100% probability of a ban. It is unlikely that you will be able to promote such a group even to 3 thousand.

If you are going to cheat participants, then no more than 200 per day and constantly remove dogs because... if 40% of the members in the community are deleted, your group will disappear from the search in VK.

How to return the community to search? - it's not so simple anymore. First, you need to get rid of the dogs. Simply delete all inactive accounts. Next, you need to write to technical support and wait for further recommendations. After a couple of months, your community will again be searched on VKontakte.

Any cheating is prohibited. Including: cheating of members by sending spam, cheating of members through programs such as bots or vtope, exchanges for exchanging likes, mass invitation to a group (more than 500 members per day - there is a high risk of getting the group blocked for cheating members).

If your community blocked for cheating members, then it’s best to write to technical support and tell us how you cheated. Then there is a high probability that your group will be unbanned, but all the cheated people will be removed.

Blocking a VKontakte group for cheating members This is probably the most common reason for blocking.

Cheat subscribers Joining the VK community for two years now has been a very risky activity. Previously, it was possible to promote your group to a million people in this way, and then receive traffic from VK search, but now the management of the social network has taken a tough approach to the quality of groups and mercilessly bans all communities that are promoted in this way.

• Scams, fraud and other gray earning schemes

If your public is engaged in attracting people to participate in various pyramids and other scams, then most likely you will get a ban.

• Changing the community theme

If your community blocked for sudden change of topic, then it’s already very difficult to get the group out of the ban. Perhaps you will be able to prove to support that you were hacked and you were not aware of what they were doing to your community.

Changing the group's theme- problematic activity. After 1000 people in the community, you won't be able to change the theme so easily. Even if you just want to change the name, but leave the topic the same, then before that write to the support service and consult with them.

• Personal insult

If your community blocked for personal insult, then 50% of the time they will forgive you if you write to support, but the second time you will be banned completely.

• Selling game accounts

Recently, this wording when blocking communities has begun to appear very often. VKontakte is prohibited from selling game accounts and accounts of this social network.

• Community blocking for pinned advertising

We have reviewed main reasons for blocking communities. Also, do not forget that you may receive sanctions against your group. For example, for excessive advertising.

VK rules allow publishing a maximum of 3 advertising posts directly through advertisers or the VKontakte advertising exchange and 2 advertisements through the VKontakte exchange. Total: 5 per day.

If you violate this rule, you will be prohibited from creating advertisements at all for a certain period.

How to protect a community from blocking?

Just follow all the rules that we have discussed above.

What to do if you or your group are blocked by VKontakte? — urgently write to technical support and find out what ways to get your community out of the ban. The same goes for personal pages.

How to block a VKontakte group

So, we have come to a very interesting topic. If you young villains want to know Is it possible to somehow block someone else’s VK group?, then, most likely, you want to get rid of competitors.

Let's look at the main ways that you will be advised to find out how to block someone else's VKontakte community:

• mass promotion of low-quality bots, where the content of dogs will be more than 50%. Mutual PR services are well suited here, for which they sell coupons because... Basically, these services use bots, which get banned instantly. Please note that you need to invite at least 30% of the bots from the total number of participants in the group, otherwise you will simply help your competitor with promotion.
• order a repost of your message, and then change the link to a prohibited product. Such groups are blocked instantly, and not so long ago extortion of money from large public companies for such frauds flourished. Communities of even more than 4 million people were blocked.
• get a job as an admin or editor and post prohibited content.
• find violations in the group.
• order a mass invitation to a group (works only for groups). There must be more invitations than participants.

There are no other ways to block a community of competitors. But the best thing is to never use such methods, but simply make a group of higher quality than that of a competitor and defeat him fairly.

The VKontakte social network has tens of thousands (if not hundreds) of all kinds of communities, groups and public pages (see). Some of them are very useful. Others don't. And in third places you can find outright prohibited materials. Such as porn, financial pyramids, sale of low-quality goods, etc. How can you block such a group in contact??

In fact, there is no particular difficulty. And now I will show you how this can be done.

What is it for

If you are an active user and you care about what information is available on a social network, then you probably go to block a suspicious community for fraud, insult, or other prohibited actions.

How can you block a group on VK

Since you are not an administrator or the creator of the group, you will not have a simple blocking mechanism. In this case, you must send an official complaint to the VKontakte administration (see). You must indicate the address of the community that you consider suspicious, attach screenshots with a description (see), which would confirm your words.

Let's see how to do it correctly.

Send a complaint about the group

I have already discussed this issue in the article -. Let's look at this point again.

We go to contact and click “Help”.

A list of popular questions will open. Here you need to write any text in the search bar. A message will appear stating that no answers were found for this query. And there will be a link “Write to us”. Follow it.

You will be taken to a form where you need to fill out your question.

In the title we write that it is necessary to block the VKontakte group. Further in the text of the message, we need to indicate her address (see), as well as the reason for the blocking. It is advisable if you attach photographs that clearly show the materials that you consider prohibited. When you have completely filled out the form, click the “Submit” button.

Now you need to wait until the administration considers the complaint and makes a decision to block the community.

Sending a collective complaint to a group

Please note that the more complaints are sent, the greater the likelihood that the group will be blocked.

How can this be done? VKontakte has a large number of groups where users work together to help each other. This could be, or sending collective complaints.

All you need to do is find such a group and post a message asking for help in blocking a malicious public page.

To do this, go to VKontakte and write “Complain” in the search bar. And filter by community. In the final list we look for a suitable group.

We see that the community “Complain about a group in contact and pages”, suits us. We go into it and leave our request on the wall about the need to block the group. Don't forget to add her address.

Now you need to wait until active users see your request and also send a complaint to block the specified VK group.

This will greatly increase the chances that the administration will close the community.

Conclusion

Keep in mind that no one gives a 100% guarantee of blocking a group. It is not a fact that the administration will consider your complaint adequate.

Also, do not forget that your groups may be blocked. Therefore, you should not get carried away with publishing unscrupulous materials.

Questions?

In contact with

Each web resource that exists at the expense of UGC has a list of content that is acceptable for posting, and VK is no exception. The basic rules are set out in the user agreement, and are also discussed in special communities for administrators- here the same information is presented in a more accessible form, without bureaucracy and complex legal formulations. However, even this document requires some explanation. Let's figure out what you can and cannot do in the vastness of the most popular social network in Russia.

Exceptions to the rules for maintaining a VKontakte group

Let's start in order. Promotion of the following categories of goods and services is prohibited on VK pages:
● gambling;
● intimate services;
● questionable intimate goods;
● tobacco products;
● narcotic substances;
● website hacking services;
● “black” marketing.

For a number of the listed items, the prohibition is not strict and is largely dictated by law.

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Gambling

Games in which winning money or material goods practically does not depend on the skill of the player are considered gambling. Accordingly, any groups associated with online casinos or card games like blackjack are blocked on VKontakte. The situation with poker is more complicated: direct advertising is prohibited, but information communities function and are doing quite well.

Their owners can post links to their own resources and even offer paid training, but do not have the opportunity to take advantage of targeted advertising. Such “double standards” are explained by the uncertain status of the game in our country: the Federation of Sports Poker of Russia, founded on November 18, 2006, received accreditation already in 2007, but then lost its official status just 3 years later. Since officials have not yet decided whether poker is a sport or a form of gambling, it remains in limbo to this day. The VK offer contains special instructions in this regard.

The situation with sports betting is somewhat different: official bookmakers have the right to run VKontakte groups and offer paid services, but ordering targeted advertising is possible only during major sporting events, such as the 2018 FIFA World Cup.

Intimate services and goods

Adult stores operate within the legal framework, so VK has no reason to block their pages.

If an organization sells sexy underwear or various sex toys, then it operates within the legal framework. However, public sites that offer pheromones to increase personal attractiveness, dietary supplements for breast enlargement, or stimulants will face an inevitable ban: 99% of such offers are openly fraudulent, while the rest offer uncertified and, often, life-threatening drugs.

It is also quite expected that they are trying to clear the social network of everything related to prostitution. But if we are not talking about the provision of intimate services on a commercial basis, but about interest groups (BDSM, swingers, shibari), then, again, the administration has absolutely no complaints about them. However, in order to avoid being permanently banned from VKontakte, their owners need to carefully filter the downloaded content. It is unacceptable to post pornographic videos (including animated ones) and images showing genitals. At the same time, erotic photos and drawings that can be considered as an art object can still be added.

Tobacco products

Since Russia prohibits any advertising of tobacco-based products, as well as remote sales of such products, tobacco shop owners are deprived of the opportunity to use VK targeting - the ad will not pass pre-moderation. You cannot use the built-in functionality of the store, unless you want to get blocked. But at the same time, you can create a community with useful content, where you will talk about types of hookahs, smoking pipes or types of cigars, and place a link there to the company’s official website.

Hacking and “black” optimizers

Probably the only section that has no exceptions in principle. Bans are received by VKontakte groups offering website hacking or DDoS services, paid or free software for hacker attacks (for example, brute force applications) - all these actions are illegal from the point of view of the legislation of any country.

But boosting likes, reposts and subscription bases is not prohibited by either the criminal or administrative code. However, for obvious reasons, the pages of all specialists and service owners who practice this will also be subject to an eternal ban.

Types of punishments VKontakte

It's time to understand the terms. Within VKontakte, the words “ban” and “blocking” should not be considered synonymous. Let's say you're trying to go to a community page and see this:

The social network has sufficient functionality to organize selective access to its resources depending on the place of residence of users. A blocked group or public page continues to function, although it becomes inaccessible to residents of the Russian Federation. In this case, it does not matter at all what is written in the user’s profile: to bypass the ban, you can use a VPN from another country’s IP.

The VKontakte group is blocked due to the fact that the content posted in it violates local legislation, but does not contradict the internal rules of VK. At the same time, access to the community is limited on the territory of a specific state.

The ban message looks different:

In this case, the community becomes inaccessible to subscribers and third-party users, and is also excluded from the internal search of the site. This measure can be either temporary or permanent. A temporary ban from a VKontakte group can be obtained in the situations listed in the table below.

If the owner of a group or public site refuses to correct identified violations, or does not contact the administration of the social network, the community is subject to a permanent ban.

There are other penalties that apply to third-party advertising. This term means the promotion of goods and services that are not directly related to the project in question. For example, a group belonging to an online store has the right to advertise the goods it sells in any available way, but commercial advertising of other organizations is unacceptable and is fraught with the following:

● advertising on an avatar, the cover of a community, photo album or video library, in a product catalog - disabling the corresponding services;
● advertising message in the title - exclusion from internal search results for two or more months, return to search only if violations are eliminated.

If we are talking about legitimate advertising, then you must adhere to the daily limit of 5 publications per day. In addition, the advertising post cannot be mounted on the wall. If these rules are violated, the administrator is deprived of the opportunity to add new entries for a period of several days and up to an eternal ban, and if the group was on the list of popular ones, then it is excluded from the rating. You can read more about the types of punishments in the section Penalties.

How to hold a VKontakte competition without getting banned?

The VK administration is no less scrupulous about various kinds of prize draws. In this regard, again, it is written clear rules, however, some points should be emphasized. The community will inevitably be banned if the following violations are detected:

● the results of the competition were not publicly announced;
● the condition for completing the promotion is to achieve a certain number of likes, reposts or subscribers in the group;
● the winner is the participant who gets the most likes or reposts to the post on his page;
● contestants must subscribe to 2 or more groups;
● one of the conditions is to subscribe to the organizer’s personal page;
● the fake account associated with the administration wins.

How strict are these prohibitions? Of course, VK moderators cannot keep track of everything that happens on the platform, which is used by tens of millions of people. Here is a striking example.

As we can see, the winner is selected by the number of likes, which is a gross violation of the rules of running a VKontakte group. However, the competition was successfully completed a full 5 years ago, and the community is still alive today. Here's another example.

Formally, the guys are not violating anything, since there is no ban on cheating statistics in browser games, so nothing threatens their group.

Separately, it is worth mentioning such an aspect as dubious prizes. If a non-profit public page with several hundred subscribers gives away a car, an apartment, or 50 iPhones of the latest model, it is almost immediately subject to a ban. In this case, it becomes obvious to any sane person that the costs of the prize fund are not recovered by attracting new participants. In fact, such communities are punished for cheating.

Forewarned means protected?

We have considered almost all the main reasons for blocking VKontakte groups. But even after studying them thoroughly, you are not immune from being blacklisted. And unfortunately, as practice shows, social network administrators are prone to preventive measures. Let's remember examples of mass bans:

● Abortion communities fell out of favor during the discussion of a law banning the retail sale of medical abortion drugs, which was never passed (2014);
● Public bookmaker offices began to “distinguish themselves” against the backdrop of the development of a bill banning the activities of bookmakers, although in the end the matter was limited only to the legalization of such companies (2016);
● Groups offering preparation services for the Unified State Exam, which was associated with large leaks of genuine test answers, were mercilessly banned, although at that time there were no penalties for the dissemination of such information (2013–2014).

As we see, nothing human is alien to the administration of the VK, even such a popular pastime as the “witch hunt” since the Middle Ages. However, even if your conscience is crystal clear, and the community does not belong to “slippery” topics, you still risk getting an eternal ban from VKontakte after the next update of the user agreement.

Thus, in 2017, many charitable organizations left VK due to the tightening of current rules. The following items have been added:

● donations can only be accepted into a special bank account from which no other transactions are carried out;
● the organization must be officially registered (for example, obtain the status of an NPO);
● it is necessary to maintain reports on expenses for the entire period of charitable fundraising, including publishing information in the group itself.

Although laws do not have retroactive force, in this case we are talking about a public offer, the compiler of which has the right to decide for himself who is affected by certain of its provisions. And it was precisely this last point that led to the disappearance of a number of projects that had been operating for 3 or more years, since it turned out to be physically impossible to collect and submit all the checks for such a long time.

Instead of a conclusion

Any SMM specialist should understand that when working on social networks, he is on someone else’s territory and formally the group or public does not belong to him. Overnight, all your hard work can go to waste, and your once lovingly chosen avatar can turn into the silhouette of a dead dog. To prevent this from happening, it is important to clearly understand what and where you are doing, follow the current rules of the site, and also be aware of current trends, so as not to repeat the mistakes of others, falling under the hot hand of overly zealous moderators. Considering everything stated in this article, you can be 99% sure that your project will function successfully and generate profit.

VKontakte users often encounter the phenomenon of blocking a group that they created and administrated, putting effort and resources into it. To find out why this happened, you need to write to the moderators. Having received a response and eliminated the reason for the blocking, there may be a chance to make the community active and working again.

Quick navigation:

Main reasons for blocking:

1. If a group specialized in one topic for a long time and then switched to another, then blocking will occur. Such situations are typical for groups with a huge number of subscribers;

2. Changing the name of the community without changing the topic;

3. The rights of other persons who were the copyright holders of the posted content or products were violated. To avoid blocking the community completely, then the content is removed from the group and access to it is blocked for community users;

4. Employees can also contact VKontakte administrators with a request to block a particular group Roskomnadzor, if it has been discovered that the community is using materials and resources included in a special Register of Prohibited Resources. In particular, publications may be pornographic in nature, talk about steroids, bookmakers and offices, weapons, drugs;

5. There is an active increase in subscribers, which is done to quickly increase the activity of the group. Most of the joined participants will just be bots. The higher the level of activity, the more suspicious the activity of the group or public looks. Moderators monitor such situations, and if bots are detected, the work of the community is blocked;

6. The administrators and management of the social network are very strict about ensuring that there is no spam on VKontakte. Therefore, if cheating is detected through spam, the community will be blacklisted;

7. Actions were carried out that were of a dubious nature. The post could call for action, but subscribers did not receive any prizes. One-sided popularization of the group causes concern for moderators, and if a complaint is received from users, the community may be blocked;

8. The presence in a group of insults addressed to a particular user, posting posts containing obscene words;

9. Using applications or programs of a dubious nature. These can be special services that help increase the number of subscribers, friends;

10. Community theft has occurred;

11. There is an active sale of accounts;

It’s better not to risk the group being blocked

Thus, if there is at least one such reason and complaints from users are submitted to moderation, the community’s activities will be terminated until all circumstances are clarified. When the admins' conditions are met, then the group will be unlocked.

Let us remind you that not only ordinary publics fall under these rules; in 2015, the largest community at that time “MDK” was blocked, which at the time of blocking numbered more than 7.5 million subscribers.

In this article we tell you why you can get banned from VKontakte and how to restore the work of the community. With comments from the administration, group owners, lawyers and other knowledgeable people. We also conducted our own experiment with tobacco and 18+ materials.

Sale of prohibited goods and services

Official Community Administration Rules.

There are prohibitions or restrictions on these goods and services on VKontakte:

Tobacco products.

Intimate services.

Sports betting.

Gambling games other than poker.

Intimate products of questionable effect.

Narcotic substances.

Website hacking services.

Drugs, cheating and website hacking are prohibited in any form, with the rest there are nuances.

Tobacco products

But you can create a group with useful content: talk about types of tobacco, hookahs, smoking pipes, cigars and place links to an online store in it.

Gambling

Online casinos "VKontakte" are completely prohibited. When you go to any page in the search, you will see:

But bookmakers are legalized. Only a few and perhaps temporarily. The measure was adopted for the 2018 FIFA World Cup and should officially support professional sports with royalties.

In legal betting communities you can post products and links to paid services. We also noticed a link to the backup public – this is just in case the community is blocked. But since the end of 2016 it has hardly been updated. This means that the main group works without interruption.

Some poker communities from the search are blocked by individual decisions of the Federal Tax Service for various violations:

But there are communities that work: they sell training courses, organize live and online tournaments.

Why poker? What about other games: blackjack, preference, whist? We asked a lawyer where is the border between gambling and intellectual-commercial games.

Intimate goods and services

VKontakte prohibits advertising of dubious intimate products. Dietary supplements for increasing potency and libido, drugs for breast enlargement, etc. are mentioned, but there is no complete list and some of the wording is vague. A lawyer comments.

Alexey Gorshkov:

“The word “doubtful” here should be considered in its dictionary meanings. According to the Explanatory Dictionary of S.I. Ozhegov, it means “doubtful, suspicious of something, unverified” and “ambiguous, which can be understood in the opposite sense, not controversial, not obvious.”

Thus, the rules refer to goods of unconfirmed validity. The administration will select them based on the list provided or by analogy with them.”

Targeting the sale of sex toys, condoms and other 18+ products that are not “questionable” is prohibited. The owner of “Condom” Yesenia Shamonina confirms. But you can run a public blog, and if there are no violations, they won’t even block it.

The specificity of communities that work with intimate goods or overlap in topics is that ordinary content can easily fall under this description:

VKontakte does not prohibit communities of interests for adults such as BDSM lovers and swingers.

Having studied the content in thematic groups, we came to the following conclusions:

It is prohibited to post pornographic videos and demonstrate genitals. But the boundaries are blurred: if it’s not a close-up and “everything is clear, but nothing is visible,” then it’s possible.

The priority is erotic photographs, which can be considered as an art object.

The quality requirements for user-generated content are lower, but the content is similar to your own.

What else can they close for?

In 2017, Irkutsk entrepreneur Alexander Nechaev began selling dog meat. Not shawarma made from mongrels, but carcasses of the Korean edible breed Nureongi. Due to user complaints, the VKontakte administration closed the community.

In this regard, the question is: can the administration block a community if the content does not violate the current rules, but users are in favor of the ban for some reason?

We asked legal expert Alexey Gorshkov whether the VKontakte administration could ban advertising of decorative black rabbits if it wanted.

The history of VKontakte knows other precedents. For example, the mass blocking of LGBT communities for promoting homosexuality among teenagers. The most famous story is the ban in 2015 of a large social project for psychological support of LGBT teenagers, Children-404.

Blocking as hype

A real block or its threat can easily be hyped and end up on the pages of the federal media. It is not surprising that the phrase “blocking the VK community” is often adjacent to the name MDK.

The organizers began hype back in 2014 by mocking the reaction of Internet users to the terrorist attacks in Volgograd and the plane crash in Kazan. Deputies Mikhail Markelov and Valery Trapeznikov responded. The topic went so well that “MDK” later found himself in such stories more than once. Once the public was even blocked for real, for insulting the feelings of believers.

The effect is obvious: in 2014, 6.5 million people subscribed to the group, in 2016 - 7.7 million, today the number of subscribers is approaching 10 million.

Roman Maslennikov, founder of the PR agency Prostor PR and Consulting:

“Explosive PR is all that went into the federal media. If a media person tries to block a popular public page, we are talking about mutual PR. In the case of MDK, the deputy attracted attention by calling for the blocking of a popular group in society. Well, the group receives attention from the authorities.

Smaller communities can also use such schemes. The smaller the community and the more media the “attacker” is, the greater the chance that the action will take off.

Another option is to use the blocking of your community as an explosive PR to make the most of the situation.”

Violations of competition rules

VKontakte has strict requirements for how to manage the community. Topically safe communities are blocked precisely for these reasons.

VKontakte requires community owners to provide users with high-quality content that meets content expectations.

VKontakte does not accept the transformation of the community wall into a stream of advertising posts.

VKontakte does not tolerate black methods of promotion.

VKontakte does not like it when users’ walls turn into a cemetery of lost repost competitions and communities that are guilty of this.

VKontakte knows when you promise too much or don't fulfill your publicly made commitments.

VKontakte does not want you to engage in blatant copy-pasting without links to the original.

Spam distribution

The spread of spam as a reason for blocking a community can mean two situations.

Unsolicited community invitations are sent from your account. Surely you still remember VKontakte 7-8 years ago, when every day you had to remove 5-10 offers to join the community from strangers. Today this mechanic does not work - you can only invite a friend to the community.

Now VKontakte can ban you even for adding friends from your personal page and then inviting them to the community. Moreover, both a personal account and a community.

To prevent the community from getting banned, moderators must regularly clear the wall of spam and remove bots from the group. Groups with cluttered walls are blocking.

Changing the community theme

In January 2017, the community dedicated to the fight against the “Dima Yakovlev Law” switched to a hotter topic - the transfer of St. Isaac's Cathedral to the Russian Orthodox Church. And it was blocked.

Federal Law No. 272-FZ of December 28, 2012, better known as the “Dima Yakovlev Law”, is a law that prohibits entry into the Russian Federation for US citizens involved in violations of the rights of Russian citizens. One of the clauses prohibits the adoption of Russian orphans by US citizens.

Even if a new topic is potentially interesting to the assembled audience, and the old one has lost its relevance, simply changing the cover will not work. Create a new community and make an announcement in the old group - this is legal.

The same applies to placing advertisements for other groups or sites in the name or description of the community.

Abuses in advertising

All posts in the photography community are designed in the same style: selection of photos, photographer, city, model (if necessary).

Interested users can immediately follow the link to the photographer’s or model’s account and order the service.

Advantages of native integrations:

You can publish a virtually unlimited number of posts.

The VKontakte administration emphasizes that the border between native integration and advertising is very thin. In order not to get blocked, it is recommended to check the compliance of the format with the Administration before posting.

Call to action (“Looking for clients”).

A call to view sketches in the album on your personal page.

The cost of the work is indicated.

VKontakte has a reason to block a group or limit the placement of third-party links on the page.

The VKontakte community can publish no more than 5 advertising publications per day, of which no more than 3 were received outside Market platforms or Advertising Network"In contact with".

There are direct calls to action: “We invite you to the master class,” “Click on the link,” “Allow the community to send messages.”

The graphic image has no independent semantic value: it contains the name of the organization and draws attention to the service.

Community bans for abuse are usually associated with the following violations:

Violations during competitions

VKontakte has strict rules, the essence of which can be boiled down to two theses:

A competition should not be a way to get likes and reposts.

The competition must be real, with real prizes and winners.

Drawing of tickets for a rock band concert in the public radio station. The prize in the competition corresponds to the theme of the community - tickets for Stas Mikhailov would not be suitable. The competition stimulates the creative thinking of users (“come up with a quatrain on a given topic”), and the rules specify additional conditions: venue of the concert and age category.

The requirements for competitions in which VKontakte virtual objects and any other prizes are awarded differ. If you are giving away sets of stickers, paid gifts, etc., you cannot require participants to like, repost, or join the community. For other prizes these conditions are permitted.

And for these violations the community can be blocked:

The deadline for completing the competition has not been established or the condition for its completion is the counter readings: the number of likes, reposts or people joining the community.

The winner is determined by the number of likes or reposts on the user's page. Have you ever had “friends” constantly asking you to repost a post so they could win pizza, earrings, or a horse ride?

Subscription condition for 2 or more sources. It's a scam and now it doesn't work.

Condition for subscribing to a personal page. Personal pages are for friends and family, and public pages are for business. And nothing else.

The prize for the winner is not determined in advance.

The results of the competition have not been publicly announced.

The winner of the competition is an account with the characteristics of a bot. The administration can determine its connection with the community owner via IP.

Subscribe to the master's personal page.

Subscribe to multiple sources.

The community may get banned for holding this competition. Especially considering that almost all draws are carried out with violations.

Overpromises

In July 2016, the “Typical Krasnoyarsk” community was blocked for drawing a 1-room apartment in a new residential complex. Overly generous gifts usually indicate scammers, not philanthropists.

The optimal prize is a small gift on the topic of the community:

Free photo session in the photography community.

Handmade bracelet in a group of hand-made lovers.

A construction set or a gift card in the public toy store.

Contests in which apartments, cars, villas and other expensive prizes are awarded are considered dubious. From the administration's point of view, this is cheating the counters.

A raffle for 5 iPhone 8 Plus smartphones in a public sports forecast is extremely doubtful. In addition, the community contains content that promises users inevitable winnings and large incomes, which is also a violation of the rules for maintaining VKontakte communities.

Content theft

In February 2016, the Buryatia Online information community was temporarily banned. The content in the group consisted almost entirely of copies of news from other sites without links to the source. The news notes that the owners’ complaints were caused not so much by the fact of borrowing as by the categorical refusal of the community administration to provide links.

In January 2018, Texterra encountered illegal copying of its materials.

The complaint did not reach the VKontakte administration; we managed to reach an agreement with Mokselle. The materials continue to be copied, but now with links to the original and an indication of the author.

Mass blocking

Mass blockings are the main scourge of communities that try to work without disruption. Usually they become a reaction to changes in legislation or the editorial policy of VKontakte.

Mass blocking problems:

Almost impossible to predict.

The requirements of the VKontakte administration may be vague and may not contain clear recommendations.

Unblocking after eliminating violations does not guarantee that the community will not be blocked again after some time.

Witch hunts

	Who was blocked	Why was it blocked?
	Communities selling hawthorn tincture	Ban on free sale of the drug
	Communities that do charity	Tightening the requirements of VKontakte
	On suspicion of promoting child suicide	Active coverage of the “blue whale” in the media and accusations against social networks
	Public pages of bookmakers	Prohibition of activities of bookmakers
	Pro-abortion groups advertising medical abortion products	Discussion of the law banning baby-kaput drugs
	Communities dedicated to preparing for the Unified State Exam	Leaked answers to exam papers online