Web Directions

How not to communicate

• In: Blog
• By:John
• November 20, 2008
• Leave a response

Yes, like all of you out there, I use Facebook. But so many of the things it does annoys me (and worse).

Here’s a per­fect example.

I’ve been using Facebook to mes­sage a small num­ber of folks I’ve mes­saged in the past about var­i­ous pro­fes­sional mat­ters. Sadly, the send mech­a­nism sim­ply wasn’t work­ing. In fact, Facebook advised me of a prob­lem and sug­gested I try again later. So, I tried again, and then saw in my out­box that the orig­i­nal mes­sage had also been sent. So, like any polite per­son, I decided to apol­o­gize to these cou­ple of peo­ple I sent mutlti­ple mes­sages to.

Here’s how Facebook responded

Nasty threat­en­ing mes­sage by Facebook as I try to com­pen­sate fo rthei mistakes

So, let’s walk through this.

1. I use Facebook entirely appropriately

2. Facebook makes a mis­take and tells me a mes­sage was not sent when it was

3. Due to Facebook’s mis­take I send a sec­ond message

4. As a polite per­son, I try to rec­tify this by apol­o­giz­ing to the recipient

5. Facebook then threat­ens me with arbi­trary social and pro­fes­sional death (dis­abling my account, a sta­tus from which I doubt it would be easy to return)

Facebook also incor­rectly tells me I am a spam­mer (not “may be” but “you are using this fea­ture to spam others”)

Here’s the thing Facebook. I’m eff­ing well not a spam­mer. In fact in the 15 or more years that I’ve been pro­fes­sion­ally or per­son­ally been using the web (since about the time Mark Zuckerberg was in dia­pers), and in which time hav­ing sent tens if not hun­dreds of thou­sands of emails, barely a hand­ful of peo­ple (and I mean one hand­ful) have ever accused me of spam­ming them. And in every case I can recall we’ve been able to to come to an under­stand­ing of why the email had been sent, and those recip­i­ents no longer felt they had been spammed.

I have a lot of con­cerns as a mat­ter of fact Facebook. Frankly your threats and mis­placed accu­sa­tions are extremely wor­ry­ing, par­tic­u­larly as I was try­ing to undo your errors.

So, despite being pretty angry, here’s some con­struc­tive sug­ges­tions for the message:

Hmmm — are you sure you want to send this message?

It seems that you’ve recently sent the recip­i­ent a cou­ple of mes­sages. As we don’t have them down as a friend of yours, our mag­i­cal robots, not being all that smart, can take this as evi­dence of spamming.

Of course, there’s a very good chance that the mes­sage you are about to send is any­thing but spam, in which case, send away.

But, if it does hap­pen to be spam, think again — our mag­i­cal robots are watch­ing, and in order to make sure Facebook keeps work­ing for every­one, we do our best to stop spam and the peo­ple who send it.

Speaking to peo­ple like they are peo­ple, and not assum­ing, let along accus­ing them of anti social (or worse) behav­ior is not too hard.

Must try harder.

One response to “How not to communicate”:

1. • By:Now officially very angry with Facebook | Web Directions
   • November 21st, 2008

   […] yesterday’s saga with Facebook, I had hoped the rude mes­sage I’d received was the extent of the prob­lems I’d face. […]

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