

You Can't Kick Me Off Facebook, I Quit - fakelvis
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/09/you-cant-kick-me-off-facebook-i-quit/63653/

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DeusExMachina
I think this rant is out of place. He was just acting like a spammer, was
warned about it but continued just because in his mind sending a lot of
friends requests to unknown people was "nice". That does not mean that it is
nice for others as well.

Complaining he had no right to appeal and comparing Facebook to a nation, or
dictatorship (or even the nazis just for a deleted account on a free service)
is out of place in my opinion. Facebook is not a nation at all nor it has to
behave like one, it is a business, with rules you agree on signing.

~~~
akadien
Agreed. This behavior is an example of why I left FB. Also, people who bitch
about the terms need to remember how much they paid to use the service.

~~~
atomical
It's not relevant whether a user pays for a service or not. They are your
customers.

~~~
Bostwick
No, the users of Facebook are not FB's customers. Their customers are the
people who pay them, groups like market researchers, advertisers and Zynga .
The users of FB are its product, not its customers, and all of the features FB
adds and maintains to its site and applications are product development.

~~~
cjy
This is a popular idea on HN. You're only a customer if you pay. But, it's an
oversimplification. A better definition of a customer is a user who's presence
increases your profits.

One way customers increase firm profits is by paying. But, in two-sided
markets customers increase profits apart from what they actually pay. An
example of two-sided market is a dating site. You could charge men and women.
But, if you charge women more, fewer will join, and the site becomes less
valuable to men. The optimal solution may be to charge women nothing so you
can charge men more. But, you're kidding yourself if you think that only men
are your customers. The men are paying in cash, but the women are also paying
by increasing the sites value. Indeed, it is likely that one non-paying woman
is worth more than one subscribing man.

Facebook users are also customers. They're paying Facebook with a lot of
valuable data and eyeballs.

~~~
akadien
"This is a popular idea on HN. You're only a customer if you pay."

It's also a popular idea in the wider world of business, which predates FB by
several thousand years. If you are interested in an abstract theory of wealth,
that's great. But the rest of the world transacts in money, which is brought
in as revenue and paid out as expenses. At the risk of oversimplifying, when
you subtract the latter from the former and the number is greater than 0, then
you can make a claim of profitability. Users donating data and attention might
be good for your business model and help increase profits indirectly. But they
are fundamentally different from customers who pay money (a means of
transferring wealth) to use your product or service (a form of wealth).

Counter-example: Barnes and Noble does not consider users who visit their
stores to read books and magazines without paying for them as customers. They
provide B&N with incredibly valuable data (e.g. which books and magazines
people want to read) and eyeballs, but they aren't customers. And neither are
Facebook users.

~~~
billybob
Semantics aside, whether or not FB users are "customers," FB obviously needs
them in order to be in business. Without them, it gets 0 dollars.

So the original point, "you have no right to complain because you don't pay to
use it," is silly. Whether or not users have a RIGHT to complain, FB should
prefer responding to their complaints over losing them as users.

As it happens, it seems that most FB users aren't phased by anything FB does
in terms of privacy or heavy-handed policies. So unless those complaints get
loud enough to signal that users are about to start leaving en masse, FB
doesn't need to care.

~~~
akadien
In general, I agree the statement "you have no right to complain because you
don't pay to use it" is silly. In the context of "a user violates the terms of
usage, is repeatedly reminded of them, continues to violate them, is banned,
and then complains about it", it's not. The guy was spamming people to sell a
book. It's a special case, not a general rule.

------
megablast
The guy is deluded: "I was flabbergasted. Going too fast adding friends?
Wasn't making friends what Facebook was for?"

He could say the same about spam:

"I was flabbergasted. Going too fast sending messages? Wasn't sending messages
what email was for?"

This sort of excuse is weak, and you could use it to justify abusing anything.

~~~
hugh3
It's difficult to see whether he's hopelessly naive or deeply disingenuous.

~~~
awakeasleep
I don't think it's either of those, though he was more towards the naive side
of things.

I read this article as a documentary of how a spammer is born. "The road to
hell is paved with good intentions."

No one likes to see himself as an asshole, instead we make decisions without
thinking about the consequences to other people, only our benefits.

------
zzleeper
So the guy was spamming everyone with friend requests? Even more, he got
warned by the system that he was spamming and he continued along?

I tend to be anti FB, but I do agree that it's annoying to get so many invites
from marketeers. Maybe the age difference explains this difference in
attitude, but for me it's actually clear =/

~~~
grovulent
Yeah - he's the sort of thing on facebook that makes me hate facebook. That he
can't even see that spamming people is wrong is what's astonishing about this
article.

But it does really highlight perfectly the way facebook acts as the purest
crossover between marketing and socialisng. Disturbing to say the least.

~~~
sprout
He really doesn't understand Facebook.

He also, I think, doesn't understand spam. He comes from a world where paper
scarcity offsets the desire of marketers to send out advertisements. The idea
that marketing is so easy that it needs to be regulated and avoided unless
your targets initiate it is completely alien to him.

------
iuguy
Wow, he got a lawyer to invoke Godwin's law.

Clearly he doesn't understand what the purpose of facebook is, or internet
netiquette for that matter. I always felt that Facebook is in an eternal
september, I guess this just supports that notion.

~~~
wyclif
If he had been directed to create a Fan page instead of a regular user
account, he would have been OK. Maybe Facebook needs to be more proactive in
diverting new users who are promoting themselves or their works to the
appropriate type of account.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
There is something to be said for this. The guy is clearly totally clueless
about what this whole "Intertubes Thing" is and probably the Facebook rep
could have examined the case, seen that, and directed him as such. But his
reaction is still pretty ridiculous.

------
ern
He is oblivious to the concepts of nettiquette, spam and social networking,
but, given his age it's understandable.

I recently helped my father (also in his 50's) join Facebook, and I wouldn't
be surprised if he goes on a friending spree. He already has a history of
sending "free" greeting cards to anyone whose email address he has. In fact,
reading this made me aware of the need to make sure he isn't inadvertently
abusing Facebook.

~~~
akadien
Geez, this has nothing to do with his age and everything to do with his level
of web experience. Your comment is pretty close to saying "giving his race" or
"given his country of origin".

~~~
ern
I looked at the wording after I posted the comment, and wondered if it would
offend anyone.

It wasn't meant as an ageist statement, but I think it's a safe bet that the
majority of older people (hackers aside) are late adopters. His own son told
him "If you're on Facebook, it's over."

~~~
akadien
It would be interesting to see demographics of FB users. I would bet recent
trends shift toward more older users and fewer younger users. If their user
base is shifting that way, then it's over for the 18-24 age group, but the
boomers will create new behavior/usage models that FB would be well to
exploit. That age group has more money and is about to have more leisure time
as they retire. Advertisers couldn't wire money to FB accounts fast enough to
target that market. Think BoomerBook.

------
chopsueyar
Hi Richard,

Your account was disabled because your behavior on the site was identified as
harassing or threatening to other people on Facebook. Prohibited behavior
includes, but is not limited to:

 _Soliciting others for dating or business purposes_

Richard's standard reply: "I write about military aviation and I'm the author
of a new book on the V-22 Osprey. I like to use Facebook to connect with
people who have similar interests and spread the word about my book. I hope
you'll check it out on my Facebook Wall.

At the end of the day, shouldn't we be blaming his daughter?

------
aw3c2
_But even Hitler's sham courts gave defendants a chance to reply to the
charges. Facebook justice more resembles the Taliban's._

says the US american "military expert". Fact is, the Sharia allows the accused
to defend himself. I am not saying that I think the Sharia is good, but linked
article contains gusting fear-mongering.

~~~
scottshapiro
Since when did Hitler handle 6 million appeals?

------
hkuo
If his article is any indication of what reading his book is like, I'll be
staying far faway from it. Leave it to a writer to write 50 pages in what
could have been boiled down to one. This seems to be another example of his
generation gap, his not understanding that an Internet audience is not so
willing to give their precious time to read a wordy and way over long article.

------
aniket_ray
I'm actually quited glad that Facebook's spammer detector works so well. Makes
me wonder how many other spammers it has kept out of my personal data.

------
hardik988
I quite don't see what he's complaining about. Maybe he should've properly
learned about all the features of Facebook that help promoting commercial
products (Fan Pages, FB Ads)..

------
fourk
It's interesting to see the reactions people have to perceived facebook spam.
When the YC startup I intern at launched a new product, we invited our
facebook friends to check out the fruit of our labor.

The two responses I got from friends were "What the fuck is this astroturfing
bullshit? Has your account been hacked or are you really just this much of an
asshole? ", and "cool! I'll check this out.", by another friend.

Where do you draw the line? Personally I'd say that friending people you don't
know definitely crosses the line. For some, clearly the line is drawn at
sending anything remotely business related.

------
motters
This is really about a clash of culture. As an author he's probably quite
accustomed to promoting his books to the widest possible readership by
whatever means are available, but it also appears that he has little
familiarity with the ways of the internet.

Did I carefully read the Facebook ten commandments before joining? No, I
didn't. To a large extent my behaviour on Facebook is a product of my previous
experiences of internet etiquette. If you have no previous knowledge of these
semi-explicit rules it would be quite easy to commit a faux pas.

------
callumjones
Hasn't this guy heard of Facebook pages? The Friend part of Facebook isn't for
marketing, it's for making friends.

------
_phred
Questionable behavior aside there is immense irony in that, by writing this
rant, and, given the incredibly popular title and subject matter of the
article, he will undoubtedly receive even more publicity and attention for his
book than he did before.

~~~
rubidium
Perhaps more than just irony.

    
    
      When I discovered this, my reporter's instinct kicked in.
    
      Success as a reporter often depends more on who you know than what you know. Networking is a core skill. Networking is also Facebook's advertised purpose, so that's how I started using it.
    

Success as a reporter also means recognizing a good story when you see one.
Not to say conclusively that he did it on purpose, but what better story to
draw publicity to yourself (and, your prized book)?

~~~
pohl
Yes, striking while the irony is hot.

------
jeffclark
So this guy's upset that his marketing spam for his first book was blocked by
Facebook, eh?

Shocker.

------
Tycho
I get some friend requests from people I don't know. It's no biggie... I just
let the request sit there unanswered. I suppose maybe they were authors and I
should consider sending them a message, but I really only want a certain type
of person on my FB, namely work and school friends. Not family, and not
strangers. Anyway, there's no way I'd consider the author's behaviour
"abusive," I mean get a grip. A level of faux-sensitivity seems to come into
play with internet users.

~~~
suninwinter
Just so you know, not rejecting them is allowing them to follow you on their
news feed. It will only show them public data, but it will be published to
them instead of them having to seek it out.

<http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/20/facebook-not-now-follow/>

------
Hoff
This looks to have the hallmarks of a rather successful troll, and I really
wish I hadn't gone near the article.

------
rudolfo_amoroso
to everyone who called him a spammer: I think there's a big difference between
a botnet brainlessly shooting out thousands of copies "Your sperm will become
self-conscious and start carving - with SpermaMAX" and trying to target people
who actually might want to buy the book.

This seems closer to the guy who used AI-magic to find people who'd tweeted
about books and to tweet other recommendations to them. Both of them tried to
pick people who seemed like they might be remotely interested.

If this is spam, it's a lite form of it, right?

~~~
ianferrel
Maybe.

I think it depends on whether your definition of how spammy something is has
to do with relevance or permission. I tend to think that permission has a lot
more to do with it.

If I sign up for a mailing list, I've given them permission to contact me.
Even if they never send me something I care about, it's not spam (assuming
that the email sent is related to what the list purported to be about).

If I have a personal friend who, as an inside joke, likes to send me links to
penis enlargement sites, that's not spam, although if it's too common, he
might find himself filtered out or not my friend any more.

If someone I have no other connection with decides to contact me with a
commercial offer, that's spam. I haven't given them permission to send me that
sort of thing. Even if the offer is relevant to me, it's still spam.

Signing up for Facebook pretty clearly gives people who _you know_ to contact
you with friend requests. It doesn't give random people trying to sell
something that permission, so their doing so is spammy.

------
lsc
why is it that people believe that they have a right to use services provided
by another entity? What happened to having a right to refuse to do business
with others?

------
markkat
Good on Facebook.

------
dinkumthinkum
Wow, who cares? So he spammed and got some notice of deletion? Whoa! I mean,
the only entertaining thing about this article is the "Share on Facebook"
badge the top. Mr. Big Atlantic Intellectual doesn't see the fallacy of
comparing a private companie's decision about how to handle its own definition
of abuse with how the laws of the U.S. work with respect to criminal matters?
And Nazis? Really?

------
DisposaBoy
Just in-case anyone have not seen the system come into use on Facebook. It's
like an automated waring system(prolly is fully automatic). First it warns
about adding so may people so quickly, it only kicks i if you're adding what
appears to be complete strangers. So if you're adding a lot of people and they
are mostly a friends-of-existing-friends type of deal or they have something i
common like they are in the same school/year/grade network then it not as
aggressive. Upon each(yes there are multiple if you keep it up) warning, it
states clearly what will happen if you adding people that quickly. IIRC it
even says the reason for the warning is that you're adding people too quickly
and you should slow down. The next stage is to stop you adding people for a
short while, it tells you about this and that you could be banned if you it
up. If you stop adding people for say a day or two you slowly regain your
ability to add people, if you're well behaved for a while you can start adding
strangers again, but for many you will be notified that you can't add them
because the system doesn't think you actually know them.

To sum up, if you get banned for adding too many friends too quickly
regardless of whether or not you were spamming, i.e adding real friends then
you're an idiot. Also, throwing a bitch-fit about how you left before you
could get banned is silly, all it does is draw attention to you for being one
of the people that are ruining Facebook for people who use it. For the record,
I log on to Facebook approximately 15 minutes every couple months on average
but I still find it annoying when people add you when the have no intention of
being your friend.

