Facebook has gotten nothing but grief since going public
last month and now a user poll is adding to the misery with more evidence that
their ads don't work and user engagement is going down. After its 100 Bn. Dollar
which saw Mark Zuckerberg become the 23rd richest person in the world
and immediately afterwards trousered 1.3 Bn. Dollars in cash and married his long-time
girlfriend Priscilla Chan and headed off to Rome to experience La Dolce Vita.
For myself I don’t think too much of FB’s ill-gotten gains have gone into
customer service for shortly after Mark took his eye off the ball I was forced
to write to him after experiencing a Zuckeroid attack.
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| Priscilla and Mark - It's not complicated |
Ciao Marco,
Sorry to have to write to you when you are busy getting busy
but almost as soon as you went on honeymoon my problems began.
Out of the blue without any warning I have received a notice
that my friend requests are blocked for "14 Days due to multiple
feedback" that I have sent friend requests to "people" I don't
know. Your highly directive and patronising process software (don't take my
word for how this stuff winds up users - ask them and they'll tell you at the
same time why FB is such a distrusted brand) then "invites" me to
cancel my pending friend requests. As I haven't accepted this
"invitation" no doubt your "intelligent" software which
makes Homer Simpson seem like a genius will discover tomorrow it should extend
this to 21 days and the day after to 28 days.
Some facts;
1. Have the Zuckeroids considered the possibility of
malicious feedback - particularly from friend trawlers whose FB requests I have
refused because their pages don't seem real or they have few friends. Or indeed
people from the Indian sub-continent and Africa whose friends have friended you
but who then ask for money or help with illegal immigration or jobs in the UK and
who as a consequence I have de-friended?
2. I have only sent FB requests to "people"
suggested by FB and where I have at least 50 friends in common - A lot of these
"people" are not people but Political, Trade Union (that's Labor in
American) or activist accounts - I also run Aylesbury Labour Party's Facebook
account - please tell me how I should know these personally to comply with your
Community standards - I'll be happy to put your considered reply on my Blog as
I know your answer (rather than waffly "Community Standards") would
be of interest to a lot of FB users.
I am a responsible FB user but like many such people I am
totally tired of your inconsistent and unrealistic policies - not that I or
anybody else could keep up with them as they seem to vary in practice from day
to day, week to week depending on what brain wave Zuckeroid programmers come up
with without really considering the impact of what they are doing outside their
own narrow attention span. Last week you were preventing putting Blog links (on
the grounds that "it looks spammy or inappropriate) on MyBlogworld Forum a
group set up by fellow Bloggers for sharing blog links!
Finally - calling us a "Community" is a delusional
fiction of your invention - a community is based on respect and engagement and
that is not the way users feel about FB - a large company which abuses its
users information and continually changes the rules to maximise its own mean
advantage.
In summary I do not care in the slightest what stupid and
illogical "Blocks" you impose - if you keep losing users trust it
will be entirely irrelevant and you will join the long line of
"impregnable" enterprises who wrongly thought they were more important
than their customers.
Stop alienating your users with stupid actions - as long as
you do we will not trust you, without trust you won't achieve your commercial
objectives and the bottom line is we are more important to you than you are to
us - your non-community.
Infine, while in Rome try an authentic restaurant, Abruzzi
on the Via Vaccara at angelo Piazza Santi Apostoli, just off the southern end
of Il Corso. It’s good food and an old established restaurant which won’t break
the bank.
Arrivederci,
DaithaiC
Footnote; such is FB’s dedication to customer service that
you can no longer write to them about your problem or issues. No sirreee, that
approach is soooo yesterday! What you need to do is “post” your (non)
communication on a help forum and then other FB users can respond to you. For,
dear members of the “Community” if you are having problems it is because YOU
don’t understand and it is simply not cost effective for a 100 Bn. Dollar company
to deal with your silly concerns because YOU are always wrong. Now that is the
type of “customer service” Frank Kafka could relate to!!
P.S. Three days after posting my letter in the Limbo land of
user forums my block was quietly lifted.
It has seemed to me for a while that Facebook is on the way out. I base this scientific observation on the fact that I am sick of it myself - sick of the feeling that I'm being spied on and used, sick of having "notifications" of stuff I don't care about sent to my mailbox, and not being able to find out how to turn them off, sick of having "friends" I don't actually know. FB is past its sell by date.
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