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This soo wrong. Arrington keeps using the word "friends" as if emails from your FB contacts were those of your actual friends. Imagine Arrington being able to

This soo wrong. Arrington keeps using the word "friends" as if emails from your FB contacts were those of your actual friends. Imagine Arrington being able to turn 4000 "friends" on Facebook into a mass email list!!! No way! That just so wrong and I don't want that to happen. The premise under wich we befriend someone on Facebook just never included them being able to email you directly. In my case, it would be the last thing to happen before I quit FB entirely and stuff my account with bogus info or close it altogether.

patrickaljord 16y ago
The problem is that they actually do with yahoo mail and hotmail http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1889234 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1889234 or read the other posts on this threads.
andreyf 16y ago
I'm the opposite. If I facebook friended someone, I've most likely met them in person, and hence providing my virtual contact is quite all right. Facebook, in a way, is the place you say things to people you're likely to meet face-to-face. I'm not friends with Arrington on facebook, and wouldn't ever expect to be, although I'd probably follow him on twitter if any of my twitter-friends retweeted him. Yet, his e-mail is probably public knowledge. My point: it's all relative. To converge on a compatible set for all of these rules is social evolution.
DjDarkman 16y ago
So it's right to export your 4000 contacts from GMail and mass mail them, but it's wrong to do the same with Facebook. With GMail I can export everything and import it to an E-Mail client of my choosing, with Facebook this is impossible, if I join a new social network I have to do everything manually.
stoney 16y ago
As I understand it, taking a list of FB contacts and turning them into a mass email list would be a violation of the CAN-SPAM rules - people need to explicitly agree to be added to a mail list.
- skinnymuch 16y ago
  this is correct. At the same time, the law doesn't really care about a 4,000 person mailing list, or even a 400,000 person mailing list.

patrickaljord 16y ago

The problem is that they actually do with yahoo mail and hotmail http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1889234 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1889234 or read the other posts on this threads.

andreyf 16y ago

I'm the opposite. If I facebook friended someone, I've most likely met them in person, and hence providing my virtual contact is quite all right. Facebook, in a way, is the place you say things to people you're likely to meet face-to-face. I'm not friends with Arrington on facebook, and wouldn't ever expect to be, although I'd probably follow him on twitter if any of my twitter-friends retweeted him. Yet, his e-mail is probably public knowledge. My point: it's all relative. To converge on a compatible set for all of these rules is social evolution.

DjDarkman 16y ago

So it's right to export your 4000 contacts from GMail and mass mail them, but it's wrong to do the same with Facebook. With GMail I can export everything and import it to an E-Mail client of my choosing, with Facebook this is impossible, if I join a new social network I have to do everything manually.

stoney 16y ago

As I understand it, taking a list of FB contacts and turning them into a mass email list would be a violation of the CAN-SPAM rules - people need to explicitly agree to be added to a mail list.

skinnymuch 16y ago
this is correct. At the same time, the law doesn't really care about a 4,000 person mailing list, or even a 400,000 person mailing list.