Here’s the deal. I accidentally violated the Facebook Terms of Service by adding to many people. I was playing a social game called mafia wars quite heavily. I suspect this was the root of the problem.

The application spam’s a lot, so I changed its setting so that it would not stream every little post to all my contacts in Facebook prior to getting banned. I was also willingly accepting friend’s requests from strangers playing Mafia Wars, and also responding to friend requests resulting from Wall Posts I had made for Mafia Wars.

It turns out that if the posts and replies are identical, or close, they consider it spamming – and you will be erased from Facebook. Ironically I was only inviting those I knew were playing the game. They can be found on the Facebook discussion forums (http://www.facebook.com/board.php?uid=2373072738).

If I played other online games and added players that had requested it, what should the threshold be? I have seen numerous Facebook lists for “501 members overnight” for mafia wars. If they can be on Facebook, how can adding 30 or 40 players each week constitute as spam? If there is a limit to the number of people you can message or add in a day or set period of time, why have the “501? lists not been removed? Often when I played mafia wars, I saw other players who had 1000+ friends. Why have these people not had their accounts disabled?

Current policy is idiotic. First, there are no stated levels for what constitutes as “abuse”. Facebook state that they “cannot provide you with the specific rates that have been deemed abusive”. Secondly, Facebook hosts hundreds of applications, games mostly, where a user is required to add members as “friends” in order to effectively play. I estimate that of the friends list I saw, 85 percent of them were made up of just total strangers who have requested that users add them for games through various “add me” group threads and forums that can be found on Facebook.

Why am I speaking up?

I feel that I have not violation the terms, as Facebook is a social networking site designed to allow people to meet other people with common interests. To be flagged by an automated system for doing what Facebook is *designed* for, i.e., “social networking” is unfair. It’s sad that Facebook would allow such applications to be used on their system and then disable people for its use. Why have a social website and then disable peoples’ accounts for being sociable?

Facebook has helped me increase my fanbase momentously.

However, it’s appalling customer service has left me hanging for an entire business week after I was hacked by someone using a 419 scam to beg my friends for money.

I have been incessantly emailing the Facebook team about my situation, to no avail. The one email I received from Dori, a member of the team, gave me a glimmer of hope, that slowly faded as days went by and no attempt to contact was returned.

From a site as notable as Facebook, this was frankly disappointing, and put a severe damper on my enthusiasm for the site.

What’s more, as I am preparing for a huge music gig in august, trying to advertise my blog, gain employment as a writer in a newspaper in Boulder, and trying to find roommates at a new school, I do not have access to the most useful social networking tool I have, and it has been taken away unfairly.

Hacking is clearly not something to be taken lightly, but neither are 25 emails from a pissed-off student. who relies on Facebook for many aspects of her life.

From a corporation as noted and celebrated by the media, I would have expected more.

http://thewarly.blogspot.com/2009/07/facebook-fails.html

http://fascistbook.wordpress.com/