Your Facebook Page Is Not a Website. Here's Why That Matters.

Here's a question worth thinking about: if Facebook shut down your page tomorrow, what would you have left?

It's not hypothetical. Since early 2025, around 10 million Meta accounts have been disabled worldwide. Many of them were small businesses that did nothing wrong.

Kellie Johnson runs Kosi, an Australian business selling wearable heat packs. In mid-2025, Meta's automated systems flagged her business and personal accounts for “child sexual exploitation, abuse and nudity.” The accusation was completely false - she sells heat packs for people with endometriosis. But Meta shut everything down anyway. Her revenue dropped from $133,000 to around $50,000 in a single month - an $80,000 hit.

She's not alone. More than 30,000 people have signed a petition accusing Meta of wrongfully disabling accounts through AI moderation with no human support and no clear appeals process. Businesses in beauty, fitness, and photography have been hit hardest - industries where a photo of a person in workout gear or a massage treatment can trigger an automated flag.

This isn't a one-off glitch. Both the Queensland Small Business Commissioner and the WA Small Business Development Corporation have published formal warnings about Meta shutdowns. The WA SBDC put it like this:

“It's akin to building a house on someone else's land. Your house is your business, so make sure you own the land.”

WA Small Business Development Corporation

Your Facebook page is someone else's land. Your website is yours.

Social media in Australia isn't growing the way it used to. Penetration peaked at 82.7% of the population in 2021 and has been sliding since, sitting around 76-78% by late 2023. Instagram users are projected to decline to 9.27 million by 2028.

Then there's the under-16 social media ban. Since December 2025, Australians under 16 can't have accounts on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or most other social platforms. Meta shut down more than 550,000 Australian accounts in response. Half a million accounts, gone overnight, because of a regulatory decision that had nothing to do with the businesses using those platforms.

That's the thing about building your whole presence on someone else's platform. You're not just at the mercy of algorithms - you're at the mercy of regulators, AI moderation systems, and business decisions made by people who have never heard of your business and never will.

Even if your account doesn't get shut down, there's a quieter problem: nobody sees your posts.

In 2012, when a lot of businesses first set up Facebook pages, around 16% of your followers would see each post. That felt like a good deal. Free marketing.

Then Facebook started tightening the algorithm. By 2014, reach dropped to about 6%. By 2016, it was below 2%. In 2025, organic reach sits at around 1-2%.

This isn't a bug. 98% of Meta's revenue comes from advertising. The entire business model is built on making organic reach difficult so that businesses pay to boost posts. You built the audience for free, and now you're being charged to reach them.

A website doesn't work like that. When someone types your business name into Google and your site comes up, that's your content, on your platform, for free.

None of this means you should abandon social media. It's still one of the best ways for people to find out you exist. Someone sees your work on Instagram, a mate tags you in a recommendation post, a new resident asks the local Facebook group who does good tiling - that's all valuable.

But here's what happens next: the ones who are actually ready to spend money will look for your website. They want to see a proper page with your services, your contact details, maybe some photos of your work. Something that tells them you're a real business, not just a bloke with a Facebook page and a ute.

If they search for you and find nothing? They move on. You'll never know they were looking.

Social media gets you noticed. Your website closes the deal. They work best together - but one of them you own, and the other one you don't.

Social media matters. Use it. Post on it. Engage with your community.

But don't make it the only place your business exists online. Because one algorithm change, one AI false flag, one regulatory decision - and the thing you've spent years building can disappear before you've had your morning coffee.

Your website is your digital home. Everything else is an outpost.