Face Up, Facebook

Facebook encourages "open marriages." Ask Dan.

Reader Dan was invited on Facebook to meet hot singles who were waiting for him. The Facebook ad used a picture of his wife in the picture. Now a front-page Reddit story and people on Facebook itself are spreading the news about the privacy concern and making a stink. Facebook can steal photos from your profile page and use them in ads targeted at your friends unless you disable your ad block and opt out of sharing in such a manner. According to sources, (The Huffington Post, August 13 2009) Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, 23, has developed a reputation, deserved or not, for being aloof and arrogant. The Harvard dropout has created one of the fastest-growing and arguably most innovative Internet companies since Google (GOOG). An investment from Microsoft (MSFT) gave it a $15 billion valuation last year. Zuckerberg has promised to make improvements in Facebook. "He (Mark Zuckerberg) also will encourage his team to work closer with bloggers, journalists, and members of the Facebook community to build better relationships so that problems can be discussed more openly. I urged him to change how Facebook deletes accounts from people who break the rules and to put in place more process for people to appeal deletion decisions." (Scobleizer, "The Shy Mark Zuckerberg, Founder of Facebook, January 26 2008) What’s harming Facebook – perhaps to a terminal degree – is enormously bad PR. For a social media company, these folks don’t understand the first thing about communication; they have alienated the press by being arrogant, aloof and dishonest. Their idea of press relations is sending a stupid message to a What’s New at Facebook Group that directs you to another website for a canned statement. According to publisher Chris A. Heidelberg, III, PhD., who was recently disabled from Facebook, "My point here is that I love the Facebook platform, but in their zeal to prevent spam they are persecuting amateurs like me who have no intention of spamming and only intentions of networking. Maybe they should borrow from LinkedIn and allow people to network who belong to the same groups. In my case I was experimenting with teaching a class in South Africa and here simultaneously before taking a trip. So I networked through one of my friends and that was considered a violation because I was adding too many friends too fast." (The Scholarly Research Ezine of Edutainment & Convergence, Aug 16 2008) Heidelberg believes Facebook can do whatever they want to do: first, cut you quickly from the squad; then, tell you to read the vague rules that they wrote to protect themselves legally. Facebook will not give you specifics in plain English on how to stay out of trouble once you have run afoul. So, where in this procedure is real due process? A due process that allows no chance to win appeals from the so-called best social networking site in the world? Something is wrong with the algorithms of Facebook: if they are trying to become a social network, they shouldn't disable accounts when people start to use them, even mildly heavily. Mark Zuckerberg has discussed governing Facebook -- and tried to patch up any existing wounds by using the word "transparency" a few dozen times.

"The purpose of Facebook is to make the world more open and transparent by giving people the power to share information," said Zuckerberg. "As the service grows, openness and transparency aren't just [about] the end state of people sharing information and more information being available. It's also the process and way of getting there."

The power of Facebook lies in the friends that daily connect to enjoy comments and discussion. Once this freedom is disrupted and the reasonable rights of free expression are taken away, Facebook will begin a long downhill slide in popularity. The true "transparency" taking place is due to enormous holes in the company's application of principles, rights, and responsibilities. The public is seeing through the hypocrisy of Facebook's front.

Honesty Box is one of Facebook's most popular applications.

• Send & Receive anonymous messages and discover what people really think of you.
• Reply to anonymous posters and flirt with your crushes.

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)