This just in: Facebook still 'evil'!

[Giftfromme]

I've heard people saying none of this is true anyway, actually. But I've heard more people saying that it is, so I guess I'll trust you. If it's true it's pretty shitty on Facebook's part.

Protip: Facebook is not a not-for-profit organisation. They're in it to make money. Being pissed at them for taking away your free advertising is moronic.

They can make plenty of money while still providing the service they are supposed to provide for free - so it's perfectly reasonable to be annoyed about this.

It's supposed to be free? Who says that? You?

 

[smithy_2045]

I've heard people saying none of this is true anyway, actually. But I've heard more people saying that it is, so I guess I'll trust you. If it's true it's pretty shitty on Facebook's part.

Protip: Facebook is not a not-for-profit organisation. They're in it to make money. Being pissed at them for taking away your free advertising is moronic.

They can make plenty of money while still providing the service they are supposed to provide for free - so it's perfectly reasonable to be annoyed about this.

They have no obligation to keep it free. Nor do they have an obligation to provide other organisations with free advertising to a wide audience. The reason the article linked in the OP exists is because they were butthurt that they lost an extremely cheap and easy way to advertise their own business.

Protip: Facebook is not a not-for-profit organisation. They're in it to make money. Being pissed at them for taking away your free advertising is moronic.

So is sympathizing with a corporation as if they were a single person in financial trouble. Just because the supreme court says so doesn't make it true. Their job in a capitalistic society is to remain competitive. It's not our job to make sure of that.

OT: Still no FB for me. I might make one of an alias soon though. I'm missing a few connections without one.

I'm not sympathising with Facebook, but they're more than justified in charging people to use their site for advertising. Kinda like how a newspaper, or a TV station, or The Escapist is free to charge people to advertise with them, but I don't see any threads here lambasting The Escapist for selling space on their website to organisations or individuals who want to get their message out, or their product seen, or their service known.

 

[Signa]

Protip: Facebook is not a not-for-profit organisation. They're in it to make money. Being pissed at them for taking away your free advertising is moronic.

So is sympathizing with a corporation as if they were a single person in financial trouble. Just because the supreme court says so doesn't make it true. Their job in a capitalistic society is to remain competitive. It's not our job to make sure of that.

OT: Still no FB for me. I might make one of an alias soon though. I'm missing a few connections without one.

I'm not sympathising with Facebook, but they're more than justified in charging people to use their site for advertising. Kinda like how a newspaper, or a TV station, or The Escapist is free to charge people to advertise with them, but I don't see any threads here lambasting The Escapist for selling space on their website to organisations or individuals who want to get their message out, or their product seen, or their service known.

There's a strong difference between TE and FB. TE's main function is serve videos and other news content to anyone who visits the site. Granted, you do get some perks for supporting the site directly and joining the pub club, but even having an account is strictly optional. TE is able to get enough of the money it needs through the advertizing it displays. Most users are OK with that because it keeps the content they enjoy free.

On the other hand, FB's main function is to share information between friends. Some people are quite popular, and some people are just interesting. A celebrity finds no monetary value in a system like FB, but it's a way for them to keep in touch with their fans (Twitter also works for this). As for the corporations we are talking about, no one needs to be friends with them, or likely wants to be friends with a corporate account. Don't get me wrong, I know some people do actually friend McDonalds and Walmart, but the vast majority of users or celebrities are not in it for profit. Accepting FB charging for this is like accepting TE's sudden decision to not allow anyone not in the pub club to view Zero Punctuation, just because it's popular, and not because it's different in any way from the rest of the content it serves.

FB would be better off just banning corporate accounts entirely if this is such a big deal. It's not like they've haven't had stupid account rules in the past. Disallowing things like fake names or limiting name changes says to me they aren't interested in keeping things fair and flexible for the people [footnote]I use the word loosely here[/footnote] they serve accounts to. They then could charge those corporations to display their ads in FB's ad space, and then no normal person would have to deal with this new charge.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

I've heard people saying none of this is true anyway, actually. But I've heard more people saying that it is, so I guess I'll trust you. If it's true it's pretty shitty on Facebook's part.

Protip: Facebook is not a not-for-profit organisation. They're in it to make money. Being pissed at them for taking away your free advertising is moronic.

They can make plenty of money while still providing the service they are supposed to provide for free - so it's perfectly reasonable to be annoyed about this.

It's supposed to be free? Who says that? You?

Facebook say it. On their home login page. "Free and always will be"

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=facebook+free+and+always+will+be&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-USfficial&client=firefox-a

Except they've begun charging premiums for services that were previously provided for free, so... yeah.

 

[LazarusLongNL]

Muwhahahahaha,

I can say "saw this coming" years ago. I am actually surprised it took em this long to flip the book on people. Wonderful, soon we'll get speeches on how its "ok, and the social norm to pay for advertisement" instead the usual "the internet helps people connect man, the world is one big happy family! go facebook!".

I see a few people defending facebook, which at this point still boggles my mind. This corperation has come back on its word and literately used the idea of "freedom" to get people invested then turned their investment, their energy, their love and for most people what has become a large part of their daily lives into a cash machine so UN-god-ly i would look out for raining frogs if i worked at FB. Yes people are defending it with "they are in it to make money?" Of course they are and every single hit that has any kind of ad support brings em that money, they are just going to break the spirit of god.. what.... hundreds of thousands of people, small blogs, small businesses? For MORE money, a GROSS over the top PILE OF MONEY. And they will break you to do it, this is called what in your opinion, clever business?

Then please Mr. Burns, why don't we charge you 1,00 per line of text in your posts, then 5,00 for actually posting and have a micro-transaction for captcha instead of a silly line.

I don't use Facebook as i keep in touch with people i want to be friends with the old fashion style, giving enough shits to call them and drop in for a cup of coffee or you know, casual sex on a sunday.. speaking of which. But good luck to everyone, i hope public opinion crushes this act of FB and hopefully a saner more "civil minded" solution will be available. as i can certainly understand that for a lot of people the loss of facebook might be devastating to their business.

tl;dr Don't use facebook, not surprised, you should fight this AGGRESSIVELY(that is to say loudly) Good luck to all FB users, wish you the best. Also, casual sex time.... see ya.

 

[anthony87]

Oh all you people who don't like/don't have a facebook page and have to tell everyone about it, you're so ahead of the curve you know that? You should be proud of yourselves.

 

[LazarusLongNL]

What a bunch of idiots. No one is forcing you to use Facebook, they can charge you however much they like.

This won't affect me anyway as I don't have a page and only have about 50 friends (and I've put the ones I really give a shit about on my "close friends" list, so I'm given a notification whenever they do something anyway).

Muwhahahahaha,

Omitted to reduce the wall.

Surely people have learned by now to ignore obvious marketing slogans like
"Things that connect us
We honour the everyday things that bring us together and celebrate people everywhere opening up and connecting. "

In case you hadn't realised, every corporation is legally obliged to its shareholders to make the biggest profit possible. There is no hippie bullshit about "sharing" and "connecting people" in capitalism, only profit. And, like it or not, we live in a capitalist system.

Surely, you didn't read an objection to capitalism in my post, nor 'hippyism?'. While i do beleive the world would be substantially better of if some of that top 2% of the world money spilled back into the world i made no such statement. Also i live in the Netherlands where profits are their, but some how we also try to care about people.... not that its working but its still a nice sentiment no?

Also a smaller note sir, i doubt any corp is LEGALLY forced to turn a profit, that statement in its elf is mindbogglingly stupid if i may say so. Which according to free speech and the internet i most certainly can. While i understand every corporation with shareholders needs to show profit to stop shareholders from dumping stock and killing it in the process, legally being forced to be profitable is utter bullshit.

Maybe your referencing purposefully sinking a company in order to gain stock and create a monopoly under anti-trust laws but i doubt that.
Also, i already have the perfect solution to capitalism. I am debt free, muwhahaha. Take that post-mortgage capitalism! take it! right in the BLACK OUTLINE ON MY BANK ACCOUNTS!

 

[Risingblade]

Seems like only the people who don't have a facebook account are complaining about this.

 

[Empireth]

I also had another, far less likely thought. Last time I used Facebook was when TSW was launching and I played "The Secret War". I actually got nailed by Facebook for inviting too many people to my friends list when my faction (Illuminati) was organizing and friending each other on a large scale just for that game. A lot of people had similar problems. To me it seemed like Facebook was trying to cut down on large scale, casual traffic. Around that time I was also hearing a lot about attacks on people for having too much fluff on their accounts and so on.

Out of curiosity, what do you mean by the bolded part? Would you happen to have any sort of citation for this? I'm wondering, specifically, what you mean by "fluff" on accounts. I was aware of the naming policy and so on.

OT: While I'm not surpised that Facebook is doing this, they seem to have jumped into the deep end. While I recognize their stocks dropped a fair amount and they're trying to regain that, retaliating in a way such as this seems... silly, to be perfectly honest.

Though, I had noticed something was up with Facebook lately, even from the generic user's point of view. I had gotten a "friend's" [I say that word loosely] status in my newsfeed -- while normally not abnormal, I had blocked all her statuses in my feed back in July. This happened a few weeks ago, around the same time Facebook publicized what they were doing to fan pages. They appear to have completely scrapped the option for users to see a certain frequency of posts by their friends. There is no option to "block all activity" "see only important activity" or "see all activity" now. Which, is a little irritating, personally.

Alas, there's little we can do but make our displeasure known. So, complaining about it, writing them nasty -- yet polite -- emails about it, and yes, not using the service. If they start losing enough money via lack of ad revenue and fewer intellectual property of yours they can sell... They will notice. Hopefully, however, they understand what they did wrong and right it, as opposed to the chance they might regress.

On the other hand, I'm still not entirely certain why they decided to implement this now. I mean, yes, Facebook is a corporate entity looking to make more revenue. However, Facebook already makes billions of dollars through ad revenue, selling off your intelectual property that you post on there, and micropayments in games. So why did they have to start charging pages as well? And why that much?

 

[theultimateend]

Hmmm. I'll just sit back here with the elite group of non-facebook users and chuckle to ourselves, once again reminded why we don't use FB...

I couldn't agree more. Seriously, Facebook and Twitter (MySpace would be in there too if it hadn't already died) are both stupid and evil. The only reason I would ever create an account on either is because I absolutely had to for a job or something.

I have it because of my job.

Lately I've been getting spammed with "relevant fan pages", they've all been pro-romney pages, or pages about how evil socialism is, or anything else that is basically drivel.

I'm so desperately curious as to where they have been getting details on what my "interests" are, because they couldn't be any further off if they started marketing feminine hygiene products to me.

Seems like only the people who don't have a facebook account are complaining about this.

I don't like that I had to put Takei on a special page just to see his shit. He was like my little Reddit repository and one of the few actually interesting updates on yee old status page.

Oh all you people who don't like/don't have a facebook page and have to tell everyone about it, you're so ahead of the curve you know that? You should be proud of yourselves.

Oh yeah! Well let me tell you just how bad I think Nickelback is! [/sobrave]

(I actually don't have anything, I just felt that was relevant)

Protip: Facebook is not a not-for-profit organisation. They're in it to make money. Being pissed at them for taking away your free advertising is moronic.

It's not a one way connection. That pool of businesses and their fan pages is one of the draws of Facebook. If Facebook didn't have any fan pages at all it wouldn't be better for it, those businesses and people are party of the product.

The fan pages are not the same as commercials, these are things that users opt-in to, they don't have them forced upon them (my example above not-withstanding).

Try not to call people moronic while not taking two seconds to actually think about what you've said yourself.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

This is one of those rare times where I'd actually advocate breaking out the lawyers.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Well that's pretty f***ed up, and I always knew that Promote (/Highlight/whatever) thing was a stupid grab for cash, but I don't use Facebook for business. I use it to send the occasional message, chat with the occasional friend, and post the occasional topical thing on my wall. I have little doubt that these too will eventually come at a price, but until then, that's all I use it for and all I intend to use it for.

Then I'll move to Google. Because I'm beginning to learn that on the internet, wherever there are dickheads mercilessly price-gouging their customers, there is almost always a benevolent alternative.

 

[lacktheknack]

Maybe I WILL head to Google+ after all...

 

[Fijiman]

I'm so desperately curious as to where they have been getting details on what my "interests" are, because they couldn't be any further off if they started marketing feminine hygiene products to me.

I'm pretty sure that they track where you go on the site to some extent or another.

 

[Therumancer]

I also had another, far less likely thought. Last time I used Facebook was when TSW was launching and I played "The Secret War". I actually got nailed by Facebook for inviting too many people to my friends list when my faction (Illuminati) was organizing and friending each other on a large scale just for that game. A lot of people had similar problems. To me it seemed like Facebook was trying to cut down on large scale, casual traffic. Around that time I was also hearing a lot about attacks on people for having too much fluff on their accounts and so on.

Out of curiosity, what do you mean by the bolded part? Would you happen to have any sort of citation for this? I'm wondering, specifically, what you mean by "fluff" on accounts. I was aware of the naming policy and so on.

OT: While I'm not surpised that Facebook is doing this, they seem to have jumped into the deep end. While I recognize their stocks dropped a fair amount and they're trying to regain that, retaliating in a way such as this seems... silly, to be perfectly honest.

Though, I had noticed something was up with Facebook lately, even from the generic user's point of view. I had gotten a "friend's" [I say that word loosely] status in my newsfeed -- while normally not abnormal, I had blocked all her statuses in my feed back in July. This happened a few weeks ago, around the same time Facebook publicized what they were doing to fan pages. They appear to have completely scrapped the option for users to see a certain frequency of posts by their friends. There is no option to "block all activity" "see only important activity" or "see all activity" now. Which, is a little irritating, personally.

Alas, there's little we can do but make our displeasure known. So, complaining about it, writing them nasty -- yet polite -- emails about it, and yes, not using the service. If they start losing enough money via lack of ad revenue and fewer intellectual property of yours they can sell... They will notice. Hopefully, however, they understand what they did wrong and right it, as opposed to the chance they might regress.

On the other hand, I'm still not entirely certain why they decided to implement this now. I mean, yes, Facebook is a corporate entity looking to make more revenue. However, Facebook already makes billions of dollars through ad revenue, selling off your intelectual property that you post on there, and micropayments in games. So why did they have to start charging pages as well? And why that much?

What bolded part? I might have made a mistake in writing it last night since I was pretty tired. If you mean the caps, TSW = "The Secret World". When the game was approaching launch they ran this thing called "The Secret War" which was a temporary mini-game run over Facebook, similar in spirit to "Road To War" which Warhammer Online ran when it was about to launch. The game was a lot like RISK where you'd attack or reinforce countries on a global map, with each friend on your list being a point you'd add to or remove from the pile to determine who controlled a given nation. Funcom gave prizes to players for participation, a couple of outfits, some starter weapons, and a few biger prizes to factions that achieved specific goals at specific times. That's where I got my "Founder Of The Illuminati" title from (which a few people asked about), it was a "Secret War" award. It got Facebooks attention due to people building friends lists hundreds or thousands of members long so they could be effective.

As far as "fluff" accounts we're talking about bogus accounts where people have done things like create accounts for their pets, or assumed other identities to goof off. There are so many differant kinds of fluff accounts that it would be nearly impossible to explain them all. In the end Facebook pretty much wants one account per person or business under their real identity.

 

[smithy_2045]

Protip: Facebook is not a not-for-profit organisation. They're in it to make money. Being pissed at them for taking away your free advertising is moronic.

It's not a one way connection. That pool of businesses and their fan pages is one of the draws of Facebook. If Facebook didn't have any fan pages at all it wouldn't be better for it, those businesses and people are party of the product.

The fan pages are not the same as commercials, these are things that users opt-in to, they don't have them forced upon them (my example above not-withstanding).

Try not to call people moronic while not taking two seconds to actually think about what you've said yourself.

I was specifically referring to the people who wrote the article linked in the OP. The only reason the article exists is because they don't generate as many hits on their website as they used to. It's still advertising, just a slightly different format of advertising.

 

[theultimateend]

I'm so desperately curious as to where they have been getting details on what my "interests" are, because they couldn't be any further off if they started marketing feminine hygiene products to me.

I'm pretty sure that they track where you go on the site to some extent or another.

Someone else must be using my PC then when I'm gone, perhaps my cats have been web surfing.

Because I sure as heck have no interest in hyper nationalism or Mitt Romney, but that's all I'm seeing on these sponsored ads currently.

Protip: Facebook is not a not-for-profit organisation. They're in it to make money. Being pissed at them for taking away your free advertising is moronic.

It's not a one way connection. That pool of businesses and their fan pages is one of the draws of Facebook. If Facebook didn't have any fan pages at all it wouldn't be better for it, those businesses and people are party of the product.

The fan pages are not the same as commercials, these are things that users opt-in to, they don't have them forced upon them (my example above not-withstanding).

Try not to call people moronic while not taking two seconds to actually think about what you've said yourself.

I was specifically referring to the people who wrote the article linked in the OP. The only reason the article exists is because they don't generate as many hits on their website as they used to. It's still advertising, just a slightly different format of advertising.

Fair enough but I'd still argue they have a right to be upset. Users aren't forced to see these ads, they choose to join the groups and to follow products they like. It's kinda creepy and 1984 ish, but that's the way of things.

The moment those ads are unavoidable is when I think the pages have no right to complain. For instance, their posts should ALWAYS reach their fans but they should not reach the friends of those fans unless they pay for "coverage" or something similar.

This would clean up Facebook and make companies be a little less obnoxious about their sharing bullshit.

edit: To note I'm specifically talking in the general case, I only skimmed the article so you may be 100% correct about the OP.