Thursday, August 13, 2009

Facebook Is a Friend of Mine?

Here Are Some Facebooks Ads- Where is the Line for Disabling Accounts?
I have recently had my Facebook account disabled. I am at a loss for why this happened. Facebook is shutting down accounts of users who are exhibiting any behavior it finds remotely suspicious. "Suspicious" often means just using the site too much! Warnings are often given, and sometimes permanent termination is the penalty for the so-called "misuse." Most of the time the disabled accounts will be turned back on, whether automatically after a cool-down period, or after prostrating yourself to the FB authorities. But sometimes they'll lock it up and throw away the key. I did find 13 reasons for getting your Facebook account disabled: 1. You didn't use your real name. My real name if Frank R. Thompson, which I used. 2. You joined too many groups. I joined about 5 or 6 groups- maximum is 200 groups. 3. You posted too many messages on a wall or in a group. I thought this was the purpose. Since I am retired, I have time to correspond with many ex-students and friends. 4. You posted in too many groups, too many user's walls. I am a spammer because I am verbose at times? I don't spam. Facebook says I "type too fast"? 5. You friended too many people. I have a couple of hundred friends. Facebook maximum is 5,000 friends. 6. Your school/organization affiliation is doubtful. My school is Ohio University, undergrad degree in English, graduate degree in secondary education. 7. You're poking too many people. I never poked one person. I don't even like the sound of being "poked." 8. For advertising your app on wall posts. Facebook used to post my blog entries in my profile automatically. I have referred to them many times, never to self-promote business. I have seen people promote businesses on Facebook comments. Facebook even advertises on my blog at times! 9. Using duplicate text in multiple messages. I write the messages, never spam the messages. 10. You are a cow, dog, or library. I am, indeed, a homo sapien. 11. You are under eighteen years old. I am, unfortunately, 58 years young. 12. You wrote offensive content. I did not write offensive content. Did you know Facebook considers reports of sudden death offensive? 13. You scraped information off Facebook. The only information I took from Facebook was their reason for my being disabled, which was vague and confusing. Is this scraping for clarification? Here are some more Facebook disabled horror stories from customers: "My daughter is homeschooled and her Facebook account was disabled saying that she wasn't registered in the school she put in as her group. She thought she could put a school down where she had a friend who could confirm her. After being on Facebook about a month, she got a message saying her account would be disabled if she wasn't confirmed by another person. We wrote to them stating that she was homeschooled and thought she just had to put a school where she knew someone who could confirm her. The next day her account was disabled and we received an email saying it was hard to confirm homeschool communities and if she wanted to reinstate her account should send an email from her homeschool community to verify that she is a member. Our homeschool community doesn't have an email address." "My facebook account was disabled, and i need it reactivated. facebook won't do it because they accused me of spamming when i was sending out invitations for a birthday party."

"I don’t spam people on Facebook, never have, never will. I don’t abuse any of the resources or groups, and I sure as heck don’t post any questionable content. So after scouring site after site and reading dozens of reports of similar happenings to other honest Facebook users I determined that cause of my problem. I had went on a short mission to add lots of friends to my account by finding people who shared mutual friends with me… this is allowed on Facebook, however, the error of my ways was that I was sending the same “welcome” message to each friend. When Facebook bots notice this duplicated content getting re-posted over and over again your account can apparently get flagged. My frustration was that I had not done anything against the rules as far as I could tell."

"I found out today, that I have had my account disabled. The only thing more ridiculous than it being disabled is the reason why. I posted on my friends wall. No inapropriate messages or content mind you, just a talk with a friend. NOTHING in their TOS says I can’t talk to my friends, NOTHING in their TOS says I can’t post on my friends walls. I have yet to receive anything close to an intelligent reason as to why I can’t post on my friends walls. All I get is, “you post too fast.” Well, what are the limits or rates at which we are allowed to post I ask, “Well, we can’t tell you that, but you exceeded it.” What kind of policy is this exactly? They can’t expect people to abide by the usage rules, when they refuse to make those rules available." "We are beginning to feel that Facebook might be disabling Jewish, pro-Israel, pro-IDF, and pro-JIDF accounts because certain Facebook admins' own antisemitic or political reasons, as we, and our thousands of members of supporters, have witnessed the promotion of terrorism, hatred and violence against Jews and the Jewish state on Facebook, which apparently goes unpunished. Just look at this group (NOT GIVEN HERE)- it's supposed to be "fighting cancer" - but with it's 1.3 million members, its description has changed and it now seems to be the biggest antisemitic hate group on Facebook!" UK entrepreneur Raj Anand, founded of kwigg, has had his Facebook account disabled after he individually emailed all his friends and members of a Facebook group he runs. Anand recently launched an independent social network for Salsa dancers in Brighton and set up a Facebook group to support it. It was this group he was contacting." "I was blocked for a little while because I was 'misusing certain features of the site' Naturally I closely examined their conditions of use etc for some insight as to what I must have done wrong. I couldn't for the life of me find anything... Upon request for clarification I was told that they were not at liberty to divulge which features or of course any thresholds of use. Then they warned me not to do it again or I would be banned permanently without recourse to reinstatement."
Actual 30 Reasons Photo
A better name for the Facebook group 30 Reasons Girls Should Call It a Night might be Girls Gone Wasted or What Sort of Person is Taking (and Posting) These Pictures?! What used to be stories shared among sorority sisters or roommates is now being captured in photographs and put on the Internet. (Anglie Felton, ParentDish, 2007)

No comments: