Fix “Restricted products” on Meta Commerce Manager

Restricted categories on Meta — alcohol, supplements, beauty claims, weapons, cryptocurrency, gambling — face stricter rules and often country-specific restrictions. The platform's policy applies globally; specific countries add additional restrictions on top.

The mis-categorisation trap is where most rejection appeals succeed. Meta's classifier sometimes places non-restricted products into restricted-category buckets based on title keywords or imagery. A coffee-flavoured energy drink labelled "energy" might trigger supplements review; a "healing" candle might trigger health claims review. The fix is verifying the google_product_category is correct, then appealing if the categorisation is wrong.

For products that genuinely belong to restricted categories, the rules are non-negotiable. Alcohol needs age-gating and country-specific restrictions; supplements can't make health claims; weapons can only target specific permitted countries. Compliance is the path, not appeal.

The country-specific complication: products legal to sell in your home market may be restricted in destination markets. UK-targeted catalogs serving products restricted in EU markets need explicit exclusion via excluded_country at item level. Targeting markets where the product is restricted wastes budget and accumulates account-quality issues.

The Audit feature catches restricted-product flags across Meta, Google, and TikTok in one pass — each has its own restricted-category list. The Optimiser can rewrite descriptions to avoid claim language that triggers category-restriction review.