

Facebook is Hiding Your Mail - edw519
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/12/facebook_s_other_messages_mail_you_are_probably_missing.html

======
citricsquid
THIS EXPLAINS EVERYTHING. God damnit Facebook.

So a couple of months back we did a give away, 100 people who like our
Facebook page (for the Minecraft forum) get a free copy of Minecraft. After
the competition "closed" I picked 100 winners and messaged them their copy,
this is what, $2000 - $2500 value?

Less than 10% (edit: I checked my spreadsheet, 8 people) ever replied to me
and this explains why. Because I can't message _from_ a fan page I messaged
from my personal account... so most of these people don't know that they ever
won (they weren't my friends) and probably never will. The message is there
sitting waiting to be read...

sigh.

------
Kylekramer
Golden rule of spam filtering: a false positive is much, much worse than a
false negative. Friends only messaging is a kind of Gordian Knot solution that
is admirable in its boldness, but spam is a complex problem that requires a
complex solution. Facebook shouldn't be taking the easy way out, especially as
it becomes the de facto communication platform.

Just to add a personal data point, I had a very similar experience with the
author of the piece. Lost my wallet recently, and lo and behold, I got a
Facebook message I never saw till today. Yes, 99% of all the "Other" messages
were spam, but this was probably the most important FB message I ever got.
Lucky for me I also had an ID card in there that the finder was nice enough to
extrapolate my work email address from, but Facebook needs to address this.

------
asr
Facebook jumping shark--a loose timeline:

2004: I sign up for Facebook because it lets me easily find classmates' cell
numbers, and I got my first cell phone for Christmas!

2005: wow, my HS friends are all joining facebook! More connection.

2006: networks de-emphasized as facebook opens to anyone with an e-mail
address. Many stop sharing contact info with a network, so odds I can find
cells/emails go down.

2007: I graduate, but use Facebook messages to stay in touch with friends
(feels less formal/weighty than email).

2008: I find some guy's wallet, find his facebook page, message him, and he
gets it back.

2009: I'm using Facebook less. But Facebook stock is burning up. Everyone I
know who went to work for Facebook could retire. I can't--but I apply to go
back to school instead, which is a rough approximation.

2010: I really can't get much info on my new classmates from Facebook, except
streams of status updates during class--a distraction, not real communication.

2011: I learn Facebook spams you a lot if you don't log in frequently enough
(they need those monthly active numbers). Messages to strangers apparently
don't work.

2012: What can I do on Facebook again?

~~~
alanh
Under 2011, you can add "Facebook starts putting everything your friends read
on certain sites into your timeline but won't let you read them without opting
in to the insanity as well": <http://alanhogan.com/facebook-pseudo-links>

------
JacobAldridge
This explains why I don't receive event invitations anymore- my Other folder
is full of them.

Unfortunately, a check also revealed a (now former) client asking for some
urgent advice. Wrong forum for him to do that, but an awkward position to put
me in.

------
SoftwareMaven
The problem is you are stuck wading through the spam, since FB's notion of
spam (not from friends) is not the average person's notion. It is worse than
no spam filtering.

------
wiradikusuma
I immediately checked my "Other" messages, and found messages from:

\- a cute chick who said i'm handsome, sent 3 months ago

\- a guy who asked about wavecom modem, found my name when he googled about
the modem

\- a long lost friend

\- random guy (but not spam), sent last year

Oh my.

------
_delirium
I just went through mine and can see why: I have dozens of messages from non-
friends on Facebook, and 100% of them were spam. If Facebook made this non-
friend inbox more visible, they'd need to improve their spam-filtering.

~~~
troels
Yes, this is effectively a spam folder. I don't see how that's Facebook's
fault.

~~~
code_duck
Facebook placed their last message to me about changes to their own privacy
policy into this folder!

~~~
jacquesm
It looks like it works just fine then.

------
bajsejohannes
I'm happy to have found a very sweet message from an old friend! How rude it
would have been to (seemingly) ignore it.

While Facebook might be right in general to hide messages from non-friends,
they should certainly have moved that message to my inbox once we became
friends (which apparently happened only the day after she sent the message).

------
tpiddy
I had a Facebook recruiter send me a message on Facebook about the possibility
of work for them, and it went to my Other folder. I didn't see the message for
months.

------
kevinburke
I'm glad I don't have to worry about being beholden to a third party in
situations like this.

I canceled my Facebook account about four months ago. I don't have to worry
about missing messages; the only way people can reach me is via Twitter or
email, both of which are posted prominently on my website.

------
there
or, why you should always put a phone number, address, and/or e-mail address
(even if they're all work contacts for privacy) on your expensive belongings.
that guy spent way more time trying to contact her through facebook than i
would have.

i'm not a facebook user, but how do people accrue spam in that other folder?
either messages from strangers are legitimate like "i found your laptop" or
they're from spammy facebook accounts which i would assume get quickly
terminated from other users reporting them, which should delete all of the
messages they've spammed out. no?

~~~
nickloewen
> should delete all of the messages

I'd hope not. Deleting a Facebook account shouldn't delete all of the messages
sent from it from their receivers' inboxes -- what if a long time friend
decided to delete there Facebook profile? I could lose years worth of
conversation with them. Messages belong as much to the receiver as the sender,
if not more.

~~~
aw3c2
I hope you are backing up up those things. If you don't, you should have zero
trust into being able to access those even tomorrow. Why would a company like
Facebook care about you?

You feel like your memories belong into your control, then why do you give a
third-party total control over them?

<http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/1717>

~~~
slig
> Why would a company like Facebook care about you?

See twitter. You can't access your older tweets or DMs. A big F you from them.

------
gdeglin
I posted on Facebook about this problem almost a month ago and several friends
confirmed that they also missed important messages (<http://on.fb.me/rr8pAK>).
A shame this hasn't been fixed already.

------
robert_nsu
I just looked at this. Most of the messages in the 'Other' section are things
I probably would have ignored anyway. I did find a five year old message that
slipped past me. I was looking for a good python book and this guy recommended
Dive Into Python. For a while, I was a bit aggravated at everyone ignoring my
question, but I suppose I would have complained about Facebook spamming me if
they would have made more effort to notify me of those incoming messages.

------
nchuhoai
This is not an example of 'evil' facebook, but poor user experience. Facebook
clearly does a poor job of explaning the user hat the inbox actually contains

------
mutagen
AMTTLOPW have lost useful messages for months to Facebook's Other Messages,
old friends, people trying to get in touch with family members, etc. No spam.
I'm pretty find-able through search engines, etc, but people are turning to
Facebook first for messaging these days.

~~~
aprescott
Just for anyone else: AMTTLOPW = add me to the list of people who. That was
hard to find via Google, for some reason.

------
dbattaglia
It would probably help if they just put the number of "Other"/spam messages
next to the "Other" button. I had no idea there was anything in there until I
checked just now. Maybe they think it looks bad showing how many spam-ish
messages you are receiving?

------
shinratdr
I wanted to read this article, but Onswipe decided my first generation iPad
was unworthy of the mana contained within, and quickly closed Safari
repeatedly, obviously to protect me.

Thank you Onswipe for saving me from reading or using my iPad.

------
lukejduncan
My other inbox contained mostly spam, and 1 very important message from a
friend.

------
playhard
This controls spam but it has it's side effect. This is a UI issue!. they
should fix it..maybe making the link to the 'other' folder more visible

~~~
caw
Or put an unread number next to it. I mean, even gmail tells me how many spam
messages I have.

------
billpatrianakos
Facebook's spam filtering assumes friends won't spam friends. Not the case.
Friends spam friends constantly! Why can't they just filter it as "from
friends", "from others", then "spam"? Then make the navigation between those
folders stick out more.

The way Facebook does it now would make sense if this were still 2004. These
days even your Facebook friends aren't really your friends. People with
thousands of Facebook friends can't possibly have real, meaningful
relationships with all of them. Most people I know just collect friends I'm
Facebook like trophies. I get tons of requests from strangers myself. My point
is that in times like these when your "friends" aren't really friends,
Facebook spam filtering should be implemented like any other email spam
filter.

Edit: My phone buzzed just 2 seconds after I posted this comment. What was the
alert? A spammy Facebook message from one of my friends.

------
SquareWheel
"No Messages"

Oh. :(

------
gallerytungsten
Another great reason to operate your own mail server.

~~~
TillE
Well, a good reason to use email. I'm quite happy with the spam filtering on
Google Apps and have no particular reason to go through the trouble of setting
up my own server.

~~~
gallerytungsten
But are you happy with Google data-mining your email to deliver custom ads?
(Of course, if you have an adblocker installed you won't see them, but the
principle holds.)

~~~
andybak
Yes I am happy for Google to do that. You phrase the question as if people
won't have even thought about it that way. I think it's a trade where I come
off the best.

I'm not much of a consumer. I don't buy that much stuff. My value to
advertisers is probably a lot less than they think it is so I'm currently
doing fairly well from selling my profile in return for free services.

------
darkstar999
Nobody has addressed the author's failure to back up his files. The loss
wouldn't have hurt so bad.

Dropbox, Google Docs, Office Live, Ubuntu One - it's not like there's a lack
of options.

~~~
cbs
The loss of computer/files was just the framing device, a scenario that
created a need to communicate which is the actual point of the article. Why
bikeshed the author's workflow? Its not like she'd actually see it here.

