Restricted categories in Facebook's Content Monetization Policies: the full list

Updated 06.10.2026 · Kostas Obuchow

Six categories of content that Meta does not ban but does restrict: tragedy or conflict, debated social issues, objectionable activity, sexual or suggestive content, strong language, explicit content. What each of the four advertiser ratings means for your earnings, what is blocked outright, where the rating is visible and how an appeal works.

Short answer

Meta’s Content Monetization Policies split the rules into four blocks: prohibited formats, prohibited behaviours, restricted categories and prohibited categories. The restricted ones are the quiet ones. They do not take monetization away — they narrow the pool of advertisers allowed to appear next to your content, and your income falls without a single notification.

There are six restricted categories:

1. tragedy or conflict;
2. debated social issues;
3. objectionable activity;
4. sexual or suggestive content;
5. strong language;
6. explicit content.

Each piece of content is rated separately on four levels, from “OK for almost all advertisers” to “Blocked”. The same subject can sit at any of them: what decides is whether the subject is mentioned, discussed or shown.

The six restricted categories

In Meta’s own wording, restricted means content that “depicts or discusses subjects” in these categories “may face reduced or restricted monetization”.

• Tragedy or conflict — physical or emotional distress: death, injury, abuse, illness, destructive events.
• Debated social issues — subjects a society argues about.
• Objectionable activity — crime, and the use of drugs, medicines, alcohol and tobacco.
• Sexual or suggestive content — from revealing clothing to explicitly sexual subjects.
• Strong language — swearing, counted by how often it occurs.
• Explicit content — wounds, bodily functions and anything intended to provoke a visceral response.

Note what is not there. No mention of children, animals, religion, medicine as a subject, politics as such, or money. A page about any of those is restricted only where it crosses into one of the six.

Four ratings, and what each costs

The rating is not a punishment, it is a filter. Advertisers set how risky an environment they accept, and Meta sorts content to match.

• OK for almost all advertisers — the widest pool of advertisers, nothing filters you out.
• OK for most advertisers — some brands filter you out, and, in Meta’s own words, that “can impact your earnings”.
• OK for very few advertisers — most brands filter you out, which “can severely impact your earnings”. In Meta Business Suite such videos may show an orange or yellow monetization icon.
• Blocked — no advertiser at all, and the content cannot be monetized.

This is why a page can keep monetization, break no rule, and still watch the rate per thousand views drop by several times. The content stayed legal; the buyers went away.

Category by category

This is Meta’s own scale, category by category. Read it as a dial, not a verdict.

The gap in the third row is not our omission: in the help centre the text for “OK for very few advertisers” under objectionable activity repeats the wording of the first level. Read that row by its two working levels and by the blocked line below.

The practical reading of the whole table is one rule: mentioning is cheap, focusing is expensive, showing is the most expensive. A war reported in a sentence, a war as the theme of the video and a war on screen are three different rates for the same page.

What is blocked outright

Four categories carry a “Blocked” line — content that no advertiser can accompany, so it earns nothing:

• content that exploits controversial political or social issues for commercial purposes;
• content that promotes the sale or use of illegal, prescription or recreational drugs;
• nudity, people in explicit or suggestive positions, or anything overly suggestive or sexually provocative;
• shocking, sensational, disrespectful or excessively violent content.

Strong language and tragedy have no blocked line of their own: they stay a dial down to “very few advertisers”. Everything else — the prohibited formats, behaviours and categories — sits in the other three blocks of the same policy, and unoriginal content is the one creators meet most often. That one is in the originality rules.

Kids and family content is not on the list

One of the most common searches around this policy is whether children’s and family content counts as restricted. It does not: none of the six categories mentions children. Not in the names, and not in any of the level descriptions Meta publishes for them.

Family content meets the list only sideways — through tragedy or conflict, if the video shows a child’s injury or distress, and through explicit content, if it shows wounds or bodily functions. The restriction that genuinely applies to kids channels is elsewhere, in fan payments: accounts that primarily post content focused on children are not eligible for Stars and Subscriptions. The full breakdown is in kids and family content on Facebook.

How the categories map to industry standards

Meta publishes a mapping of its own categories onto the advertising industry’s brand safety floor and brand suitability framework. For a media company this table matters more than the wording of the policy: it is the language your advertisers already use.

Meta states that in some places it enforces more strictly than the framework: piracy and spam are removed from the platform under Community Standards rather than merely demonetized.

Where to see the rating

Per-content monetization status is in Meta Business Suite on desktop and in the Professional dashboard on mobile. Content that only a few advertisers will accept may carry an orange or yellow icon there.

Two habits are worth more than any list:

1. check the status of a video that performed well but paid badly — that gap is usually a rating, not the algorithm;
2. compare the rate across your own formats. If one topic consistently pays less per thousand views than the rest of the page, it is probably sitting a level down.

Appeals and what a violation costs

If a reel has been demonetized in error, an appeal goes straight to the review team. One appeal per demonetized reel, and appeals are “typically reviewed in 7 days or less”.

The cost of a real violation rises in steps:

• an individual reel’s violation takes monetization off that reel;
• serious or repeated violations on individual reels can cost the whole account its access to monetization programmes;
• a single Community Standards violation is enough for a Page or profile to lose access;
• repeated violations of the Content Monetization Policies can lead to a temporary or permanent ban on the Page, profile or Group using monetization programmes.

One more thing worth knowing: licensed music from Meta’s own catalogue, labelled Licensed music in the audio library, does not demonetize a reel. Music from anywhere else can.