Disqualification rules: write them before you draw

The result lands on an account that does not follow you. Or on a profile with no posts. Or on someone who entered forty times. Whatever you do next looks bad, and it looks bad because of a decision you did not make earlier.

Before or after is the whole difference

Removing entries that fail a written rule before drawing is part of running the giveaway. Removing an entry after seeing where the result landed is replacing a winner. From the outside — where everyone except you is standing — the two actions are indistinguishable, and only one of them is defensible.

This is why the fix is never a better judgement call in the moment. It is a sentence in the caption, published before the first comment arrives.

What the rule has to answer

• Does the entrant have to follow the account, and will you actually check?
• Does a private profile qualify? Many people use that setting precisely to avoid exposure
• Does a profile with no posts qualify?
• Does a newly created profile qualify, and from what date?
• Do repeat comments count as separate entries, and is there a cap per person?
• Does someone who was tagged but did not comment qualify?
• Are there age or location limits — and if the prize ships, where to?
• How long does the winner have to reply, and what happens if they do not?

Any answer works. What does not work is having no answer, because then the answer gets invented at the worst possible moment.

Follow-to-enter is the one that needs care

Requiring a follow is common and reasonable. The problem is verification: a follower list is not practically checkable at scale, so in reality you can only check the winner. That is fine — but say so. "The winner will be checked for the follow requirement before the prize is confirmed" is a rule. Discovering the requirement after the draw is not.

Also consider what you want. Accounts that followed only to enter will unfollow afterwards, so the requirement mostly buys a temporary number. If what you want is participation from people who already follow you, the requirement adds friction without adding much.

Be careful with the rules that punish real people

No profile picture, few followers, private account, recently created — each of those describes real people more often than it describes a fake entry. Used as a disqualification rule, they remove legitimate followers, and a legitimate follower who was disqualified tells other people about it.

What actually indicates accounts created to enter is a combination, and usually at scale: several profiles with the same name pattern, varying only in a trailing number, commenting the same text within the same minute. One profile with no picture is not that.

The sentence that prevents the worst case

If you add only one line, add this one: a reply deadline for the winner, and what happens if it passes. "The winner has 48 hours to reply; otherwise a new draw will be held."

It covers the most common failure — abandoned profile, message sitting in the requests tab — and it covers it with a public rule instead of a judgement call. Better still: draw two or three names at once and publish the order, so the second name is a backup that existed from the first draw, before any silence.

Where the rules have to live

In the caption of the post people are commenting on. Not in a link in the bio, not in a Story, not in a pinned comment added later. Rules the entrant did not see are rules you will have to argue about, and the argument happens in public under the announcement.

A checkable result closes this loop: the entrants that were drawn from, the time, and a code anyone can open. With that published, "the list was not changed afterwards" stops being something people have to take your word for.