Like I Needed Another Reason Not to Use Facebook!
Written by Casper Manes on January 16, 2013
There’s a reason why I am bringing this up here. There were a small handful of articles online that I saw this week which caught my eye, all of which seem to indicate that Facebook is working on monetizing spam to see just how much they can make off it.
The first was an article on CNN that mentions Facebook is experimenting with the concept of paid messages. According to the article most spam is delivered to Facebook users’ “Other” folder rather than their Facebook inbox. Facebook is looking into how much someone outside your network would be willing to pay to guarantee their message gets to your primary Facebook inbox.
Salon.com has more on this story. In this article, they mention that last month Facebook did announce they were experimenting with a US $1 charge to guarantee delivery. Now, a Mashable article mentioned in the Salon post shows where a user had the “opportunity” to deliver a message to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for the bargain price of $100. That’s quite a racket they have going on there. Facebook can make a buck per message delivering spam to you, but it will cost you $100 to complain to their CEO!
But wait, there’s more! Forbes this week reported that recently passed revisions to the Video Privacy Protection Act now means that if you opt in to sharing your viewing history, services like Netflix will be able to share your entire video watching history with others. Netflix and Facebook were the dominant lobbyists pushing for these revisions.
I’m a huge Netflix fan, and there’s nothing in their catalog I would feel awkward explaining to my parents that I had watched, but while I am perfectly okay with my friends seeing that Lost, Babylon 5 and Breaking Bad are all in my viewing history, I really don’t want the world to know that I also watched the entire Twilight series. Twice. Oops. I’ll edit that out of this post later.
Of course, Facebook is a for-profit enterprise, and is well within their rights to do as they please, as long as they update their terms of service. Users have the option to stop using Facebook at any time, much the way smokers can quit at any time they want to. For me, I spend a great deal of time and energy making sure I don’t get spam in my email inbox. Why would I want to use a service that is just going to make money ensuring that spam gets to me when I use them? If you are a Facebook user, be aware of what is going on. If you are a Netflix user, make sure you opt-out of their information sharing.
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Let’s see how long it will take for furious users to start complaining. Facebook is going lower and lower – probably they are losing users not fast enough to see the warning signs FB is losing popularity. Or maybe they do see and what to milk as much as they can, while they still can.
I need to send this to my friends, so they would now understand why I quit that social networking site for a few months now. It’s a lot of BS, really. I no longer get to read most of my friends’ feeds. My feed is populated with a lot of sponsored ads and all other types of promotions. Worse, marketers force me to like their page. And now this. It’s like professionalizing spam, which is so wrong in the first place. Honestly, I don’t mind not being there because I’ve lived without it for many, many years.
You’re right there, Fischer! It’s funny how a lot of people claim that they couldn’t live without Facebook as they’re going to have a very hard time keeping in touch with friends and family. Seriously, even Leo Babauta of Zen Habits isn’t on Facebook, and he’s one of the biggest and most respected blogger in the world today. If someone as huge as he can survive it, we can as well. It’s just a matter of being creative. By the way, I do miss receiving snail mails and seeing those lovely stamps on them.
I know that Facebook wants to think they’re high and mighty, but the truth is I think they’re really struggling when it comes to monetizing their website and attracting more businesses to invest and pay for their services. Though they’re earning millions or even billions, they are answerable to many stakeholders or investors who simply want more. In the end, they may just sacrifice the one thing that’s keeping it alive for so long: regular users like me. So far, I haven’t received any mail yet, but I’m hoping none gets lost in my inbox.