Zoom conference submission suspended

[doctorology]

Hi,

We received an auto-generated email shortly after our conference submission saying that our conference was suspended as we had violated some terms of service + community standards.  Unfortunately we've had no correspondence from zoom to say exactly what the issue is.  We've been waiting more than 3 days for a response to our appeal.  Tried multiple times to contact customer service online without any luck - only have been told to wait for the relevant team.  We have  a conference to run but zoom don't seem to interested in providing any customer service to us despite us being on a premium plan. Anyone know what may the issue here and what we can do about it.  Below is the email we received:

Hi Doctorology Admin,
We’ve detected an issue with your Zoom Events account that violates our Terms of Service and Community Standards , which resulted in the suspension of your event Doctorology Comprehensive General Practice Conference 2021.
Problem Type Multiple infractions to the Community Standards detected in Session Image

[ChrisO]

It seems they are complaining about the image you used for the session. Maybe try swapping it out.

[doctorology]

Tried switching out the main image.  Didn't work unfortunately.  I can try and switch each individual session image but that would involve 25 swaps -I think we'll have to do this.  The session images were created using a paid-for subscription on Adobe Spark.  

Zoom still haven't responded to ticket requests or our appeal - it's very frustrating. 

[doctorology]

I switched out all the images and still no luck.  Still not getting a response from zoom customer support. 

[ChrisO]

Have you tried escalating the ticket?

[doctorology]

I have been contacting them daily using the online web chat.  I eventually persuaded them yesterday to let me speak to their manager in customer service.  He said that he had spoken to the technical team and would have it sorted within the day and would they would even contact me via mobile to confirm.  Unfortunately, nothing materialized from this discussion. 

[ChrisO]

Did they mention if it was related to the images being created in Adobe? Just curious if that is the cause.

[doctorology]

They didn't mention anything - that's what's so frustrating. I've had no response whatsoever.  The web chat service team are clueless and advise you to await a response from their technical team.  I tried generating a single webinar and it works fine  evenwith the Adobe generated images - the photos are royalty free anyway nd anything downloaded from Adobe spark is free to use commercially according to them (https://adobespark.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360010563553-Can-I-use-the-free-photos-and-icons-fo...)

[ChrisO]

Would be a super annoying thing to test, but could use the snipping tool to snip the images, save them that way and reupload. My guess is that the conference may already be flagged though and any corrections wouldn't remove the flag so you would have to start fresh. \_0.0_/ Hopefully you find a solution and when you do please share with the rest of us so we do not encounter the same issues.

[doctorology]

I actually already did something similar.  I regenerated all the images and fit them to size advised by by zoom (I think it was 744 pixels by 488).  It still got rejected.  I am going to try submitting as summits today instead of a 5-day conference - it won't be ideal for my attendees to click a different link each day but will have to do.  I hope that solves it.   I think the problem lies somewhere in the conference package that zoom has recently designed and nothing to do with us.  

[ChrisO]

When you say regenerated, did you just resize them? Resizing them would not remove metadata, which is why I suggested the snipping tool as it would create an entirely new image.

[doctorology]

I have tried screen shotting the images - I don't know if that's the same as snipping. It got rejected that way. 

[ChrisO]

Pretty much the same thing, snipping just allows you to refine the section of the screen.

[doctorology]

Thanks for your help by the way. Really appreciate it. 

[doctorology · Accepted solution]

I finally figured it out!  It seems that the attached image was somehow causing an issue and causing the whole conference to be rejected.   It was very difficult to do figure this out retrospectively as this was 25-session multi-day conference - and each time you resubmit, the whole conference locks and you can't make any edits.  You are able to do a work-around and to duplicate the conference, but you still need to reconfigure the ticket options as these are not copied.

I've attached the 'offending' image  - it was created on Adobe Spark and the photo (of the injection) was royalty free and from Pixabay according to Adobe.

Thanks again to those who tried to help.  I again reiterate the total and utter lack of support from Zoom customer service and technical support.   As a suggestion it would be better if Zoom could just inform the end-user in the 'conference rejection' email what the offending image is, or not to allow upload altogether.