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.<p>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.
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?<p>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 =/
The guy is deluded: "I was flabbergasted. Going too fast adding friends? Wasn't making friends what Facebook was for?"<p>He could say the same about spam:<p>"I was flabbergasted. Going too fast sending messages? Wasn't sending messages what email was for?"<p>This sort of excuse is weak, and you could use it to justify abusing anything.
Wow, he got a lawyer to invoke Godwin's law.<p>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.
He is oblivious to the concepts of nettiquette, spam and social networking, but, given his age it's understandable.<p>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.
<i>But even Hitler's sham courts gave defendants a chance to reply to the charges. Facebook justice more resembles the Taliban's.</i><p>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.
Hi Richard,<p>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:<p><i>Soliciting others for dating or business purposes</i><p>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.<p>At the end of the day, shouldn't we be blaming his daughter?
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.
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)..
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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.
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.
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.
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.<p>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.<p>If this is spam, it's a lite form of it, right?
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?
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?
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.<p>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.