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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 reques

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. 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.

akadien 16y ago
Agreed. This behavior is an example of why I left FB. Also, people who bitch about the terms need to remember how much they paid to use the service.
- atomical 16y ago
  It's not relevant whether a user pays for a service or not. They are your customers.
  - Bostwick 16y ago
    No, the users of Facebook are not FB's customers. Their customers are the people who pay them, groups like market researchers, advertisers and Zynga . The users of FB are its product, not its customers, and all of the features FB adds and maintains to its site and applications are product development.
    - cjy 16y ago
      This is a popular idea on HN. You're only a customer if you pay. But, it's an oversimplification. A better definition of a customer is a user who's presence increases your profits. One way customers increase firm profits is by paying. But, in two-sided markets customers increase profits apart from what they actually pay. An example of two-sided market is a dating site. You could charge men and women. But, if you charge women more, fewer will join, and the site becomes less valuable to men. The optimal solution may be to charge women nothing so you can charge men more. But, you're kidding yourself if you think that only men are your customers. The men are paying in cash, but the women are also paying by increasing the sites value. Indeed, it is likely that one non-paying woman is worth more than one subscribing man. Facebook users are also customers. They're paying Facebook with a lot of valuable data and eyeballs.
      - akadien 16y ago
        "This is a popular idea on HN. You're only a customer if you pay." It's also a popular idea in the wider world of business, which predates FB by several thousand years. If you are interested in an abstract theory of wealth, that's great. But the rest of the world transacts in money, which is brought in as revenue and paid out as expenses. At the risk of oversimplifying, when you subtract the latter from the former and the number is greater than 0, then you can make a claim of profitability. Users donating data and attention might be good for your business model and help increase profits indirectly. But they are fundamentally different from customers who pay money (a means of transferring wealth) to use your product or service (a form of wealth). Counter-example: Barnes and Noble does not consider users who visit their stores to read books and magazines without paying for them as customers. They provide B&N with incredibly valuable data (e.g. which books and magazines people want to read) and eyeballs, but they aren't customers. And neither are Facebook users.
        sprout 16y ago
        That sort of thinking is what effectively killed Digg.
        billybob 16y ago
        Semantics aside, whether or not FB users are "customers," FB obviously needs them in order to be in business. Without them, it gets 0 dollars. So the original point, "you have no right to complain because you don't pay to use it," is silly. Whether or not users have a RIGHT to complain, FB should prefer responding to their complaints over losing them as users. As it happens, it seems that most FB users aren't phased by anything FB does in terms of privacy or heavy-handed policies. So unless those complaints get loud enough to signal that users are about to start leaving en masse, FB doesn't need to care.
        akadien 16y ago
        In general, I agree the statement "you have no right to complain because you don't pay to use it" is silly. In the context of "a user violates the terms of usage, is repeatedly reminded of them, continues to violate them, is banned, and then complains about it", it's not. The guy was spamming people to sell a book. It's a special case, not a general rule.
  - akadien 16y ago
    Users use, and customers pay. In this case, the two are different groups.
hugh3 16y ago
And the thing that really bugs me about all this is that having written this disingenuous article, he's just managed to get a platform to market his book to the thousands of people who are currently reading this article in order to complain about what a tool this guy is. There's even a handy Amazon link from within the article!
pbhjpbhj 16y ago
Funnily enough I've been struck with a block on a "page" from Facebook; the page is for a nearby City. My crime appears to have been removing spam posts that were advertising affiliate links and pyramid schemes and the likes. Obviously I've just been blocked from full access with no questions to me and no way for me to enquire if I'll ever get any of that access back or indeed if they plan on someone else taking an editorial view of the page. The page meanwhile is going to the dogs filling with more and more spam. Obviously my actions weren't nice for some people either - spammers need to spam to make money and I was obviously preventing that. So, I think my point is it cuts both ways and that Facebook appear to be rather haphazardly managing their monsterlith.
trustfundbaby 16y ago
I think the guy is a bit of an idiot, but lets not gloss over the fact that there was no appeal process ... Even Paypal, who are regularly demonized on the internet, have one.

akadien 16y ago

Agreed. This behavior is an example of why I left FB. Also, people who bitch about the terms need to remember how much they paid to use the service.

atomical 16y ago
It's not relevant whether a user pays for a service or not. They are your customers.
- Bostwick 16y ago
  No, the users of Facebook are not FB's customers. Their customers are the people who pay them, groups like market researchers, advertisers and Zynga . The users of FB are its product, not its customers, and all of the features FB adds and maintains to its site and applications are product development.
  - cjy 16y ago
    This is a popular idea on HN. You're only a customer if you pay. But, it's an oversimplification. A better definition of a customer is a user who's presence increases your profits. One way customers increase firm profits is by paying. But, in two-sided markets customers increase profits apart from what they actually pay. An example of two-sided market is a dating site. You could charge men and women. But, if you charge women more, fewer will join, and the site becomes less valuable to men. The optimal solution may be to charge women nothing so you can charge men more. But, you're kidding yourself if you think that only men are your customers. The men are paying in cash, but the women are also paying by increasing the sites value. Indeed, it is likely that one non-paying woman is worth more than one subscribing man. Facebook users are also customers. They're paying Facebook with a lot of valuable data and eyeballs.
    - akadien 16y ago
      "This is a popular idea on HN. You're only a customer if you pay." It's also a popular idea in the wider world of business, which predates FB by several thousand years. If you are interested in an abstract theory of wealth, that's great. But the rest of the world transacts in money, which is brought in as revenue and paid out as expenses. At the risk of oversimplifying, when you subtract the latter from the former and the number is greater than 0, then you can make a claim of profitability. Users donating data and attention might be good for your business model and help increase profits indirectly. But they are fundamentally different from customers who pay money (a means of transferring wealth) to use your product or service (a form of wealth). Counter-example: Barnes and Noble does not consider users who visit their stores to read books and magazines without paying for them as customers. They provide B&N with incredibly valuable data (e.g. which books and magazines people want to read) and eyeballs, but they aren't customers. And neither are Facebook users.
      - sprout 16y ago
        That sort of thinking is what effectively killed Digg.
      - billybob 16y ago
        Semantics aside, whether or not FB users are "customers," FB obviously needs them in order to be in business. Without them, it gets 0 dollars. So the original point, "you have no right to complain because you don't pay to use it," is silly. Whether or not users have a RIGHT to complain, FB should prefer responding to their complaints over losing them as users. As it happens, it seems that most FB users aren't phased by anything FB does in terms of privacy or heavy-handed policies. So unless those complaints get loud enough to signal that users are about to start leaving en masse, FB doesn't need to care.
        akadien 16y ago
        In general, I agree the statement "you have no right to complain because you don't pay to use it" is silly. In the context of "a user violates the terms of usage, is repeatedly reminded of them, continues to violate them, is banned, and then complains about it", it's not. The guy was spamming people to sell a book. It's a special case, not a general rule.
- akadien 16y ago
  Users use, and customers pay. In this case, the two are different groups.

hugh3 16y ago

And the thing that really bugs me about all this is that having written this disingenuous article, he's just managed to get a platform to market his book to the thousands of people who are currently reading this article in order to complain about what a tool this guy is. There's even a handy Amazon link from within the article!

pbhjpbhj 16y ago

Funnily enough I've been struck with a block on a "page" from Facebook; the page is for a nearby City. My crime appears to have been removing spam posts that were advertising affiliate links and pyramid schemes and the likes. Obviously I've just been blocked from full access with no questions to me and no way for me to enquire if I'll ever get any of that access back or indeed if they plan on someone else taking an editorial view of the page. The page meanwhile is going to the dogs filling with more and more spam. Obviously my actions weren't nice for some people either - spammers need to spam to make money and I was obviously preventing that. So, I think my point is it cuts both ways and that Facebook appear to be rather haphazardly managing their monsterlith.

trustfundbaby 16y ago

I think the guy is a bit of an idiot, but lets not gloss over the fact that there was no appeal process ... Even Paypal, who are regularly demonized on the internet, have one.