As we reported back in May, on August 15th, Facebook withdrew its protection extended to the existing pages of pharmaceutical companies, and began to allow users to post comments on their walls: just as with any other page.
Up till earlier this month, pharma had been given special dispensation, known as 'whitelisting', to disable comments on brand posts, photos and videos (not to be confused with the option to disallow posts by fans, which is common to all pages). The only exceptions to this will be pages dedicated to a prescription drug: for instance, Facebook.com/BrandX (as opposed to Facebook.com/LivingWithDiseaseX) may, if approved by Facebook, be allowed to disable commenting.
Left with a choice to either monitor very closely in order to report any adverse drug reactions (as they must do by Federal Law in the States) and stamp out any product misinformation, or shut down their pages altogether, some companies have already chosen to take the easier - and cheaper - course. The Washington Post reported recently on the latest reactions from some of the largest drug companies on Facebook:
- Amgen, which had previously planned to maintain its Break Away From Cancer page, removed it Monday. A company spokeswoman told the Post that Amgen continues to work through the comment moderation issue and have yet to find a solution.
- Bayer, best known for its aspirin, is consolidating its Facebook presence by closing the Strong at Heart page, which had more than 26,000 likes, while continuing to manage the I Am ProHeart page, which has more 49,000 likes.
- Purdue Pharma, which makes pain relieving medications, closed its In the Face of Pain page until the Food and Drug Administration releases rules for online engagement.
Obviously, a good Facebook moderation tool is needed to provide the monitoring, alerts and escalation paths necessary, and it seems someone has already jumped adroitly into the gap: Semantelli, a New Jersey based start-up, have announced the release of Facebook AETracker - what they claim is a unique solution to help pharmaceutical companies maintain their Facebook pages by tracking adverse drug reactions and product misinformation in user comments with additional workflow to report them to FDA.
I've not tried it, so I don't know how it may differ from any of the other excellent products on the market which we use as part of our page moderation and management, but as we said back in May, it seems a shame for lack of resource to force the inevitable conversations around these health issues to go elsewhere: close their pages and pharma companies will lose the opportunities for interaction, marketing, product development and customer service that it provides, as well as depriving users of their source of information and support of their community.