
Why Does Facebook Want to Suck the Fun Out of Unfriending? - MicahWedemeyer
http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/dan-macsai/popwise/evolution-murder-facebook?partner=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+fastcompany%2Fheadlines+(Fast+Company+Headlines)&utm_content=Google+Reader
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NathanKP
I see it as nothing more than an expression of the transitory and meaningless
nature of most online relationships. Facebook is simply afraid of losing user
base because the automated tools make it so easy to leave.

In Facebook's defense I must say that any web service or startup would
probably complain if another service made it easy for users to destroy their
account, especially if the content associated with the account was an
indexable source of traffic, and destroying the account (unfriending) would
possibly hurt other users.

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ugh
How is that a defense? “Others would also suck“ is not a good argument to
make.

Any web service should give the user full control of their data. Leaving
should be easy, not hard. (And it is hard. I seem to only ever use the help
pages of web services when I want to leave.)

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loup-vaillant
The only reasonable way to have full control of your (personal) data is to
have it a home, stored in hardware you own (or at least fully control). That
means no Facebook and no Gmail, unless you trust them to not use you data for
_anything_ you didn't expressly specified.

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philh
It sounds like seppukoo does in fact spam all your friends. I'd be a lot more
sympathetic to them if that weren't the case.

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numair
Yes, because "I quit being a database entry and started being a human again"
is far more spammy than "please help me tend to my virtual farm."

/sarcasm

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GrandMasterBirt
lol!

Hey in yovile you gota send messages to friends for cash. So... What everyone
winds up doing is sending "asd" messages to everyone on their friend list
every day.

Sure, thats not spam, its "asd".

~~~
throw_away
one feature I just found out about & feel compelled to share with everyone I
encounter is that you can ban entire applications from your feed. you just
click the hide button and you have the opportunity to ban either a user or an
app. ban the app & you still see that person's updates, but nothing about
their silly farm.

after a couple days zapping spam, facebook becomes about 100x more compelling.

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ShabbyDoo
I recall the grassroots "Delete your MySpace Day" from a few years ago. While
it is likely that relatively few people actually deleted their accounts, the
meme distributed the implicit message that MySpace might not be cool anymore.
Since then, we've seen many articles about how it has become an online ghetto
of sorts. Although Facebook is clearly more entrenched and better in so many
ways than MySpace, it must be scared of such a backlash. Perhaps they are
using C&D letters to quell such grassroots uprisings?

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toadstone
it just doesn't want people giving their facebook logins out

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branden
Yet they'll ask for your email password to take a look at your contacts.

Doubtful, and hypocritical if true.

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jfarmer
OP is exactly right. Facebook wants to be a one-way valve, much like
Microsoft.

They also don't like the idea of people "polluting" the social graph, either
by adding spurious contacts a la MySpace or by removing random nodes from the
network.

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philwelch
But adding random friends just to add to your Mafia Wars gang is alright?

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jfarmer
No. They hate it. In fact, they're making it against the TOS and adding a
special "game friend" feature in Q1 2010.

[http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Policy_Example...](http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Policy_Examples_and_Explanations#Latest_Policy_News)

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mattdennewitz
i feel a bit of unabashed satisfaction in unfriending, if only because of the
addition by subtraction.

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norova
Tasteless and a tiny bit offensive, but definitely not worthy of a C&D, in my
opinion.

~~~
gaius
Facebook explicitly stated that they will never inform people if you unfriend
someone, this app does an end-run around that, of course they're going to
disallow it.

