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Facebook needs to quit with its thuggish attitude

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Facebook needs to quit with its thuggish attitude

#11

Post by jrockway »

Over the year and a half I have had my profile, I had amassed hundreds of pictures, hundreds of personal messages, many links/bookmarks, and hundreds of useful personal contacts; and all have now been lost due to Facebook egregious and bull doggish attitude.

It's their site, and you didn't pay to use it. I'm not sure why you'd expect them to care what you think.

But anyway, consider it a gift. Instead of wasting your time ammassing photos, you could do something useful instead. If you don't have any friends or social network without having a social networking profile, you're doing it wrong.

Re: Facebook needs to quit with its thuggish attitude

#12

Post by sanj »

steveplace wrote: post #8
jonknee wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you even want your account back? Facebook doesn't deserve your page views.

He detailed that in his post. They have control over his personal information and he wants it back. Is there a FB app that would backup your list of contacts and other information you'd like to have? Is it against the ToS?

Yes:

http://apps.facebook.com/friendcsv/

Warning, this is what got Robert Scoble kicked off FB:

http://scobleizer.com/2008/01/03/ive-been-kicked-off-of-face...

Re: Facebook needs to quit with its thuggish attitude

#13

Post by dgabriel »

jrockway wrote: post #11

Over the year and a half I have had my profile, I had amassed hundreds of pictures, hundreds of personal messages, many links/bookmarks, and hundreds of useful personal contacts; and all have now been lost due to Facebook egregious and bull doggish attitude. It's their site, and you didn't pay to use it. I'm not sure why you'd expect them to care what you think. But anyway, consider it a gift. Instead of wasting your…

You have a point as far as ownership of the site goes, but I'm going to strenuously disagree with your second paragraph.

You may not be a picture person, but many of my friends are. We have hundreds of pictures of us doing silly things in silly places, at parties, at weddings, graduations, traveling, etc. This is what we look like as we move through life, and all of them are valuable keepsakes of our time together, and various stages of our lives. Amassing photos is useful and wonderful.

It's also not fair to imply the poster doesn't have friends or a network outside of facebook. He or she may have a great network, but facebook makes communicating with that network easier & more fun. I mean, that's the point, right? There's nothing wrong with that at all.

Re: Facebook needs to quit with its thuggish attitude

#14

Post by aggieben »

streety wrote: post #4
danielrhodes wrote: post #3

Bummer. All those reasons above sound like they are either related to false accounts or spam protection.

Either that or poking. Lets face it if you're going around poking people you deserve to get banned.

I always chuckle when looking at the profile of a female friend, and there's the link that says "Poke her".

Re: Facebook needs to quit with its thuggish attitude

#15

Post by chaostheory »

Your profile being disabled may have been unfair. However some of the examples you cite from Google make sense:

"Facebook just disabled my account. I started a group for people with the same last name as me and i started sending messages to people with the same name to join."

"I added a number of friends from my College because of the mere fact that people in the same school should know one another."

"My account was disabled a few hours ago.. because I was friending too many people."

I do not want to be friends on facebook with people I've never met in person. It sounds like Facebook is trying to prevent the same problem I had on Linkedin. Just because you worked for Big Company X or used to go to X school, it doesn't mean I want to add everyone from those places on my friend list, nor do I want constant emails or notices from Facebook of these people trying to add me. I don't want 'friend request' spam. This is the reason I killed my Linkedin account. In general I don't want tons of people I don't know, messaging me on Facebook unless I actually met them face to face in the past.

Re: Facebook needs to quit with its thuggish attitude

#16

Post by prakash »

babul wrote: post #7

Sorry to hear this, especially as it sounds like you do not have a backup. What you may consider a false positive are common problems with FB/eBay/PayPal and the like who try to act in the best interest of the masses. If you are unable to resolve this, I can ask my friends who work there to see what they can do.

Why don't you email Mark Z directly? That will probably help you much more than dealing with customer service.

Also keep us posted on how it goes. Good luck.

Re: Facebook needs to quit with its thuggish attitude

#17

Post by stats101 »

babul wrote: post #7

Sorry to hear this, especially as it sounds like you do not have a backup. What you may consider a false positive are common problems with FB/eBay/PayPal and the like who try to act in the best interest of the masses. If you are unable to resolve this, I can ask my friends who work there to see what they can do.

Well, a number of messages later, and a very stern message from them (see quotation in article), I've not got anywhere. If you can push a few buttons on my behalf, then I would be highly grateful.

Re: Facebook needs to quit with its thuggish attitude

#18

Post by jonknee »

steveplace wrote: post #8
jonknee wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you even want your account back? Facebook doesn't deserve your page views.

He detailed that in his post. They have control over his personal information and he wants it back. Is there a FB app that would backup your list of contacts and other information you'd like to have? Is it against the ToS?

The only data he really lost is messages and what not, which isn't too bad (I doubt many people store life critical data in their Facebook messages). Photos he should already have on his computer. It sounded to me that he wanted his Facebook account back so he could continue to use the site, not capture posts he made so they could be saved.

Anyway, I'd treat it as a lesson learned. You have no recourse with a free service. Don't count on it as always being there. Especially for services like Facebook that are burning through crazy amounts of cash. Facebook could go away entirely tomorrow and the world wouldn't grind to a halt.

Re: Facebook needs to quit with its thuggish attitude

#19

Post by jonknee »

prakash wrote: post #16
babul wrote: post #7

Sorry to hear this, especially as it sounds like you do not have a backup. What you may consider a false positive are common problems with FB/eBay/PayPal and the like who try to act in the best interest of the masses. If you are unable to resolve this, I can ask my friends who work there to see what they can do.

Why don't you email Mark Z directly? That will probably help you much more than dealing with customer service. Also keep us posted on how it goes. Good luck.

Yea, he seems like a reasonable guy. Just make sure to not mention any business ideas in your email.

Re: Facebook needs to quit with its thuggish attitude

#20

Post by axod »

dgabriel wrote: post #13
jrockway wrote: post #11

Over the year and a half I have had my profile, I had amassed hundreds of pictures, hundreds of personal messages, many links/bookmarks, and hundreds of useful personal contacts; and all have now been lost due to Facebook egregious and bull doggish attitude. It's their site, and you didn't pay to use it. I'm not sure why you'd expect them to care what you think. But anyway, consider it a gift. Instead of wasting your…

You have a point as far as ownership of the site goes, but I'm going to strenuously disagree with your second paragraph. You may not be a picture person, but many of my friends are. We have hundreds of pictures of us doing silly things in silly places, at parties, at weddings, graduations, traveling, etc. This is what we look like as we move through life, and all of them are valuable keepsakes of our time together, a…

That assumes he wasn't doing anything wrong, and they blocked him in error.

If he was spamming, trying to amass 'friends', I'd say that is doing things the wrong way, and concentrating on real friends is a better plan.

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