Meta pushes high-profile Facebook account holders to enable Facebook Protect features

Meta appears to be making more effort to push Facebook users handling high-profile pages to enable Facebook Protect features. Those who fail to turn on the safety tools might risk getting locked out of their accounts.

Social media consultant Matt Navarra shared screenshots of Facebook notifications going out to certain page administrators and account holders about activating Facebook Protect. In a follow-up tweet, Navarra said Meta’s leading social network “confirms” the requirement of activating Facebook Protect for “high profile accounts.”

One of the users who received the notification was asked by the social network to enable the feature in 15 days upon receiving the message. “After that, you’ll be locked out of your Facebook account until you turn it on,” the notification reads.

On the official Facebook Protect page, it appears that the feature was primarily designed for people managing pages for electoral candidates and elected officials. “Accounts that face additional threats during an election cycle may need additional protection. That’s why we created a program called Facebook Protect,” Meta wrote.

Other than a password health check, though, it appears that the Facebook Protect program merely requires page managers and high-profile account holders to use two-factor authentication. For now, enabling Facebook Protect is only required for people who will receive a similar notification as mentioned above. But Meta says it plans to expand the program to more users worldwide in 2022.

It is unclear what are the factors considered for an account or page holder to be required to use Facebook Protect. One Twitter user replied to Navarra’s post, suggesting that the number of page followers may not be the only consideration.

Social media platforms like Facebook also measure a page’s reach for the posts they publish. So a page can have just a few thousand followers, but its posts could reach millions of users.

Another reply to Navarra’s report suggests that Facebook users managing multiple pages might also be required to enable Facebook Protect. This appears to correspond with what Meta said in the Facebook Protect page: “All Page admins of enrolled Pages will be required to go through Page Publishing Authorization to ensure the security of the Page, regardless of whether or not individual Page admins choose to enroll in this program.”

Photo by Timothy Hales Bennett on Unsplash