Meta Just Gave Me the Middle Finger (Here’s what I learned—and how to bulletproof your brand)

Summary

Podcast Summary: “Meta Just Gave Me the Middle Finger (Here’s what I learned—and how to bulletproof your brand)”

Podcast: Content Is Profit
Hosts: BIZBROS (Luis and “Fonzi”)
Date: October 9, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode delivers a candid, personal story from host Luis, who woke up to find his Instagram account flagged—with Meta denying his ability to monetize. The BIZBROS use this as a springboard to discuss the dangers of building your brand solely on social platforms (“rented land”) and share actionable steps for creators and businesses to protect and own their audience. The tone is lively, humorous, and direct, blending solid marketing lessons with real talk and a few memorable rants.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The “Meta Middle Finger” Moment

• Luis’s experience: Luis received a notification that his Instagram could not monetize, leaving him surprised and initially confused.
  • Quote: “I got a notification on my phone saying that my Instagram account was flagged and that I could not monetize it. And I was like, what? ...Can I even monetize my Instagram account?” — Luis [00:00]
• Content flagged: A reshare of an AI-altered photo analysis video, thought “funny” and “interesting,” triggered the warning.
  • No explicit political stance was intended, but the content’s nature likely flagged Meta’s filters.

2. Learning: Don’t Build on “Rented Land”

• Central theme: Social platforms are not fully under your control—meaning your business can be dramatically harmed without warning if you depend on them alone.
  • Quote: “Don’t build your home on rented land.” — Luis [05:21]
  • Fonzi adds: “Build your list. Build an asset you can control...you cannot control 100% social media.” [05:39]
• Social media’s limits: Platforms control reach, can flag/demonetize content, and change the rules or priorities (typically favoring advertisers and engagement over your content’s organic reach).
  • Example: Only a small fraction of your followers see your posts, regardless of following count.

3. Bulletproof Your Brand: Own Your Audience

• Tactic 1: Build an Email List
  • Don’t be intimidated by tech: At its simplest, just collect emails/names in an Excel spreadsheet or similar. Autoresponders or marketing tools are just facilitators.
    • Quote: “You don’t need a software that sends emails to all these people… That can literally be an Excel sheet.” — Fonzi [00:37, 08:49]
  • Email converts: Despite claims that “email is dead,” it remains the strongest online sales tool.
    • “Email is not dead. For those thinking that email is dead, it’s number one on selling online.” — Luis [00:25, 09:54]
  • Engagement goldmine: Those who subscribe signal they want deeper connection and are open to your offers.
• Tactic 2: Diversify Platforms
  • Don’t put all content on one platform. Testing different platforms (Instagram, TikTok, Patreon, etc.) offers a “safety net” and reveals where your message resonates best.
    • Luis: “If we have the time and capacity…test different platforms to see where your safety net is.” [13:56]
  • Platform behavior differences: The same content can perform wildly differently across platforms due to audience nuances.
    • Example: "Operation Truth" (a show produced in their studio) saw millions of views on one platform, and just thousands on another for the same content [13:37].
• Tactic 3: Leverage Podcasts & RSS Feeds
  • Podcasting offers unique ownership: Via RSS feeds, you truly “own” distribution and can migrate between platforms.
    • Quote: “That RSS feed you own, right...it’s very unfiltered.” — Luis [14:40]
  • Audio content aficionados are highly engaged; using podcasts + email creates a “killer combination" for deep audience relationships.

4. Content Risk, Compliance & Adaptation

• Algorithm unpredictability: You often don't know what content will get flagged, especially with sensitive topics or provocative thumbnails.
  • Shift from “controversy for attention” to value-driven angles to avoid unnecessary flags.
  • Luis: “Often, sometimes we’re not following the rules… maybe it was the angle of the thing.” [12:16]
• Be authentic, not reckless: It’s OK to have strong messages—just stay within guidelines, and always plan an exit/back-up if one channel disappears overnight.

5. Humor & Radical Audience Ownership

• Funny moment: Jokes about going fully “bulletproof” by going back to physical mailing lists—“Bulletproof. I can’t tell you for real, not fireproof, but maybe bulletproof.” [16:25]
• Memorable banter: The hosts’ chemistry comes through, especially in discussion of being “flagged proof,” and the riff about old-school dividers and files for contacts.

6. Call to Action & Final Wisdom

• If you don’t have an email list—start collecting emails, any way you can!
• If you’re only on one content platform, start spreading out now.
• Ask yourself: "How can I move my audience off social and into my owned ecosystem?”

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “Don’t build your home on rented land.” — Luis [05:21]
• “You don’t need a software that sends emails to all these people… That can literally be an Excel sheet.” — Fonzi [00:37, 08:49]
• “Email is not dead...It’s number one on selling online.” — Luis [00:25, 09:54]
• “That RSS feed you own…it’s very unfiltered.” — Luis [14:40]
• “I can’t tell you for real, not fireproof, but maybe bulletproof.” — Fonzi [16:26]
• “There’s a lesson on everything.” — Luis [18:23]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [00:00-02:41] The Instagram “middle finger” and what triggered the flag.
• [05:21-08:46] Central lesson: Don’t build on “rented land”—the perils of platform dependency.
• [08:49-09:54] Practical ways to collect emails and why email is king.
• [12:16-13:56] Navigating content risk, compliance, and shifting strategies for reach.
• [14:40-15:36] The ownership power of podcasting and your RSS feed.
• [16:25-16:36] Humorous “bulletproof your brand” moment.
• [17:35-18:23] Call to action and encouragement to start building your owned audience.

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Final Thoughts

The episode is a potent reminder: Social platforms are powerful tools but unreliable foundations. Create systems for direct, owned audience relationships (especially via email and podcasts). Don’t wait until you get “the middle finger” from Meta. Build your business on ground you control—no matter your technical skill or content type.

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Stay bold, get smart, and “build your list” before it's too late.

Transcript

[A]

This morning, guys, I got a notification on my phone saying that my Instagram account was flagged and that I could not monetize it. And I was like, what? And I was like, well, first of all, can I monetize my Instagram account?

[B]

Build your list. Build an asset that you can control. And unfortunately, you cannot control 100% social media.

[A]

What are other ways that maybe we can steer or even own our own traffic? Right, where you can steer? Building real relationships through email. And by the way, email is not dead. For those thinking that email is dead.

[B]

I don't have a software that sends emails to all these people. You don't need it. Like, in the most basic element, people are signing up for something, Right. They willingly give you their contact information. That can literally be an Excel sheet.

[A]

Hey, guys. Welcome back to continuous profit. We are back in studio. What's up, acquisition.com Solo episode. Solo episode.

[B]

I'm manifesting Alex Hormos investing into our company.

[A]

Let's go. Well, we had somebody walk in Friday, and they're like, can I invest in your company?

[B]

Not quite like that. Not. Not. Not how it went. But, yeah. He was like, maybe I'll invest in your company.

[A]

There you go. That's even better. He liked what he saw. Just saying, like, for those that are not familiar, you know, we have a physical studio here where we are, and we like the wall effects. And when they walk into their studio when they were going to record, they're like, wow, that. So, yeah, anyways, it was a little bit. A little enhancement. We did. But enough of that. This morning, guys, I got a notification on my phone saying that my Instagram account was flagged and that I could not monetize it. And I was like, what? And I was like, well, first of all, can I monetize my Instagram account? Second of all, I was like, wait, what did I post that that caused this flag? Right. And I went back and, you know, as you might know, Venezuela might not be in the best political situation. Right. So we've been, you know, sharing a little bit of the information of things that are happening there, which, surprisingly enough, that was not the flag. And I was like, wow, that's really interesting. And it was last night, I was just going through my feed, and I found a video that I found hilarious. I found a video of these reports of allegedly AI altered pictures for Kamala Harris. And again, not siding with any political thing in the topic of content is profit, but we just want to bring this because it's obviously hot and spicy for a lot of people that want to put their thoughts on social media.

[B]

Right.

[A]

One to express themselves, whether you're on one side or the other. And I was just resharing in my story this video because I thought it was a good analysis of that specific picture that showed a crowd. But then on the airplane, there was no crowd on the reflection of the airplane.

[B]

Right.

[A]

I was like, well, this is pretty interesting. And I just thought it was funny and I shared it as a funny thing.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And then hence I get a notification and you can see the pictures here of my account has been fact checked by independent fact checkers. And I was like, wow, what a great way for meta to clean their hands and say that it's not them that are banning your account and maybe save a lot of money. That's immediately the first process.

[B]

Somebody that reported you or whatever. And then. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Which by the way, we found we're gonna link it right below to the article that says, you know, that whatever that fact checked that. But again, if you read books like trust me, I'm lying, you can find that probably everything on the Internet can be fake. So we don't know what to trust. But anyways, apart from that, what do we trust?

[B]

Are you even real? Who do we trust?

[A]

Yeah, are we real? Is this AI generated this whole episode?

[B]

It's not.

[A]

By the way, this accent cannot be faked, let me tell you that. But I guess I started thinking like, okay, how does this affect business people or the audience that listens to content is profit. And a lot of the people that come to either the studio conversations with us, they're always like very. When they start to create content, there's always a level of being careful with the message and the things that they say. Right. And we've seen on social that a lot of the polarizing messages. Right. Might grab a little bit more traction. Right? Polarizing topics might grab a little bit more traction also depending on like what platform you're in, you know, what, maybe what point of view your you're sharing. Right. For example, what just happened in Venezuela, a lot of, you know, wrongdoing is happening in the country. A lot of people are sharing that. And the entire country banned X. Right. Because, you know, Maduro the dictator almost like blocked Elon Musk. And Elon Musk, being the owner of X, he unlocked himself and continued to talk on Maduro's account or whatever. And anyways, the country completely banned this platform. Right? So this can happen anytime and it can happen to everybody business. And unfortunately, if something like this happened and you depend on social media content organically, or whatever it is. It might be the difference between staying on business or going out of business. So immediately we started thinking, okay, well, this clearly was a very little episode. But there's a big lesson, and you summarize it in a sentence when we started discussing this episode. Don't build your home on rented land. So what are your thoughts on that, Fonzie? Because, like, you obviously deal with messaging and a lot of the products that we work with, right? With our partners.

[B]

Yeah, true. Just laughing. I mean, this is a concept that has been going around at least, I mean, from way before we entered the industry, right? But it's one of the first things you learn when you join the direct response marketing world, which is build your list. Right? Build an asset that you can control. And unfortunately, you cannot control 100% social media. Right? I mean, there are challenges in each platform. Different platforms, you know, they got their different challenges, but one of the most common ones that you'll probably relate to is you publish great content, you have a great following, but only a very small percentage of your following actually sees your content and gets served with your content, right? So that is very frustrating for a lot of creators. It's like, why I have 20,000 followers, 50,000 followers, you know, 10 followers, and nobody or only like 10% of those people are the ones that are, like, watching my content, right? Like, why doesn't they just serve my content? And at the end of the day is because, you know, obviously social media, it's a product itself, right? They're trying to make money as well, and they got to find different ways to monetize a platform. And unfortunately, they're not prioritizing showing some of your content to the people that is following you, right? Rather, they might show, again, something that has more value for them. Meaning advertisers, right? They're paying money for this platform. They're going to show you those posts or they're going to show you things that they know. They're going to keep you in the platform consuming because you are the product at the end of the day, right. For these people. But, you know, the. The idea of, you know, building your home on rented land is this, that the problem is if you create something of significance and then your whole business is just based on that, meaning, let's say all your revenue is attached to Instagram. If something like what happened to you, right, where they flag you or they demonetize you, you lose your revenue overnight. And you don't want to be in that position. So what you want to do is you want to build your own list, you want your asset that you can control, right? Meaning people are going off platform and signing up to email, newsletter, etc. It doesn't have to be a newsletter, right? There's many, many ways you can do this, but pretty much they give you willingly their contact information and then you have that store in a place where you can use it regardless, right? Because they agreed for you to communicate with them. So if they're giving you their information, you can use an email autoresponder, right? You can start sending newsletters, emails weekly, etc, you can start promoting off channels of these social medias. And that is the value of it, right?

[A]

You can build relationships and let's say.

[B]

You know, you're like, oh, but I don't, I don't have a software that sends emails to all these people. You don't need it. Like in the most basic element, people are signing up for something, right? They willingly give you their contact information. That can literally be an Excel sheet that you have all this information, you know, name, email, phone number, and you use that, you can literally send a personal email one by one. Right. Again, you don't need all this software. These tools have been created to facilitate marketing efforts. So if you have, you know, activecampaign, go high level, whatever it is awesome, you can leverage that asset to email multiple people at the same time and you're saving your time of going one by one. But if you don't have any of these tools at the most basic level now you have access to the people that are agreeing to communication with you off platform.

[A]

Yeah, I think something that came to mind apart from like the tactical of like, okay, collecting demo, which obviously very, very important, right. I think that's top of the list.

[B]

And many different ways of doing it too.

[A]

Absolutely. You know, most people, because they might not have the technical ability to go on and maybe sign up for these platforms or learn a little bit, or maybe they don't have the resources to go hire somebody to do it for them. Right. They take advantage of these platforms like Instagram, Patreon, like TikTok that you can actually monetize inside of the platform, but that's where the journey of monetization ends for a lot of people. So we want to encourage you, okay, what are other ways that maybe we can start steer or even own our own traffic, right. Where you can still building real relationships through email. And by the way, email is not dead. For those thinking that email is dead it's like, I think number one on selling online and the people that join that, that means that they're closer to you, that they want to hear more about you, that they want to find out more of what you offer of your message, I think that's a very positive thing. I think it's also a really good indicator to if you have it out there and you promote it every single time and people are not signing, that's a really good indicator to see, okay, well, maybe what I'm saying or the thing that I'm delivering might not be valuable for that person. Right? And then we can adapt and we can shift. Now, the other thing I want to share is like, we want to motivate people to be passionate of their message without harming anybody. And of course, there are guidelines and of course there's certain levels of things that you can and you cannot share online. But when you start seeing excessive flagging or excessive stoppage at your message, and you never know what these algorithms might pick here and there, for example, we decide to put a political thumbnail for this episode, or we frame it in a way where we want to. I'm doing quotations here. We might want to attract attention by talking about that topic that is relevant today. The whole video or podcast or micro content might be flagged because is under the eye of a political angle, Right? But if we shift it and we're like, okay, this is a lesson for the content community, for the creator, for the entrepreneurs, based on this thing, the angle now slightly changes and now you might not get flagged. So again, make sure that you go over the guidelines of every platform that you put in content out there, because often, sometimes we're not following the rules. And to be fair, maybe that's what happened in there. Maybe it was the angle on the thing. What really I guess pissed me off was it was not my own original content. So that was the thing. Why is that other account not flagged? Or why is it.

[B]

I mean, maybe, maybe it is flagged. Maybe flag doesn't really.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Stop you from posting.

[A]

Absolutely. So you got me thinking, right? And I'm like, okay, well that's really interesting. Now I know you know where that limit is. And you know, some people might be like, okay, I might want to push the buttons a little bit more. And we also know of platforms like for example, like Kill Tony, that they're like, you know, in the comedy world, right. They're like the anti institutions, right? Then. Now platforms like Netflix, because they became so big because they were so genuine with their message on how they want to do things. Now bigger platforms are chasing them, Right. So you're like, okay, now the game flips. So in the meantime, it's like, okay, what is the platform that you can own? Where is it? You know, how can you start directing people that resonate with your message to your own thing? But also, that's why I'm such a big fan of multiple platforms, because you can test the same message in multiple platforms and see what happened. You know, recently with Operation Truth, a show that runs here out of this studio, we gain access to their accounts, and there are certain platforms that they got massive reach versus all their same content, but one has millions of views, the other one has probably a few thousand views. Right. Same piece of content. So why.

[B]

I mean, I think there is also differences in the platform. Absolutely. Obviously, the people that hang out mostly on Facebook are going to be different than the people that hang out on TikTok. Right. Like, they have different tendencies.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

They're in the platform for different reasons.

[A]

And that's. That's my point of, like, why. Me, personally, I'm a big fan of. Okay, if we have the time and capacity and maybe the team to test different platforms to see, you know, where your safety net is, because you can be like, you can see where it goes, versus if you put, like, 100% of their resources. Right. And you might say one thing that the platform doesn't like, then it's game over for you and we have to restart again, for example. Right. And most people won't recover for that because there takes a lot of effort refining your message. It takes a lot of effort to put it out there, as we all know. So, again, can we figure out a system, Right. Where you can do that? And I think, you know, to each, obviously, everybody's going to have their own case studies and how they do things, but I. We highly recommend that the other thing. Go ahead. Sorry.

[B]

No, no, I was just saying.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Awesome, buddy. You know, going off of that, you know, your safety net of content. But also that's why I think podcasting is such a powerful vehicle, man, because that RSS feed you own, right. And it's almost like, so prehistoric the way that the audio podcast works. That is beautiful because it's almost. It's very unfiltered. Right. And you can. You actually can move that RSS on that. You can move it to different platforms. The platforms don't. I think today with modern podcasting, like, if you start a podcast, let's say Instead of Spotify, it might be something like that. But that original RSS feed you own, so the combination between that and your email and the people that listen to podcasts, which by the way, if they pay attention, it's because they're actually enjoying your message, is a killer combination to be able to start building trust with the people that might resonate with your message.

[B]

I think the new strategy for people should be to when they publish content, tell people to drop in their address and then send them a mail in subscription service where they're like I, you know, they actually sign up in there and they put their name on number and, and everything and they're like I, Luis Camejo agree to get messages from the other Luis Camejo. Right. And messages can be sent to and you know, phone number, email and the address. And then you have a, you collect like a physical ballot, right? And you have it in your house in a divider, you know, you have your, one of those big filers and you put it on there, you know, and you save it for life. I think that should be the way to do it. Should be the way, yeah, Bulletproof.

[A]

I can't tell you for real, not.

[B]

Fireproof, but maybe bulletproof. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Keyword warrior proof.

[B]

Yeah, Being flagged proof, all that stuff.

[A]

That's hilarious. But obviously navigating today's marketing environment and if you're a small business, maybe most of your revenue comes from interactions like this. There's a lot of people are building the businesses in the back of social media and no wonder a lot of people are so scared to maybe voice their opinions outside of the business if that's what you feel. And sometimes that's necessary to be able to maybe do right in the world. And we never know. So anyways, I think food for thought, this episode, short and sweet. We want you to consider, right. If you don't have an email list, how can you start collecting those emails? Right. If you are in just one platform, how can you start building a system that allows you to test messages in different platforms? If you have any questions around this, obviously we're here to help and assist. You can send us a message in social media. You can also send us an email. You can do Luis L U I S D A at B Rose Co. I'm happy to answer any questions.

[B]

You might have started getting cold pitched on our emails, that's fine.

[A]

My answer is always the same. If you want to, you know, be a guest on the show or if you want us to come to your.

[B]

Show, go to podcast saying cold pitch that people are trying to sell stuff.

[A]

Well, that too. But, you know, mostly we get pitches to be people be on the show, which we're, you know, we're referral based. And, you know, I'm, and I'm sure if you're listening, if you want to be on here, send me an email and we can figure something out. But I encourage people to go to patchmatch.com and go sign up there. It's only five bucks and you can connect with incredible creators.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

And shout out to Alex, the founder. Amazing. Anyways, anything else, Fonsi, before we head out for this episode? No. Thank you for allowing me to rant a little bit. And I think more rent the lesson because at the end of the day it's like, okay, my Instagram account is very personal.

[B]

There's a lesson on everything.

[A]

Yeah, there's a lesson on everything. So how can we start thinking of ways that you can move the people that are paying attention to you on social into your own ecosystem system and start communicating with them there? Cool.

[B]

Cool with you.

[A]

Are you cool?

[B]

Yeah. Are you cool?

[A]

Yeah, I'm cool.

[B]

Are you chilled out now, guys, with.

[A]

That said, thank you so much for tuning to the Continents Profit podcast. Go ahead and follow the show in your favorite podcasting platform and on social media.

[B]

That's right. And if today's episode helped you move one step closer towards your goal, please don't forget to share this episode and don't forget to leave a five star review. See ya.

[A]

Bye, guys.