Dear Facebook: may I have my life back, please?
On Saturday night Facebook took my life away, now I'm asking nicely, can I have it back please?
As a blogger for Download Squad I've followed the rise and rise of Facebook with fascination as the social networking site has expanded on the scale of an influenza pandemic. I watched with avid interest as my inbox was bombarded with Facebook friend requests from seemingly every part of my life and every corner of the globe.
Succumbing to the Facebook phenomenon, I was quickly drawn in by the combination of applications, messaging and of course the competitive instinct to rapidly gather a vast following of like minded friends who would be able to share with me the excitement of online photo albums, holiday maps, interest groups, online graffiti or the simple pleasures of turning fellow Facebookers into zombies, vampires or pirates (arrrr).
And then, on Saturday night I was framed for a crime I didn't commit, and now I'm on the run Richard Kimble style - trying to clear my name of one of the worst crimes that an Internet user could be accused of - being a spammer
It all started innocently enough (I'm sure that's what they all say), I was researching an article on Facebook developers and thought that the best place to start would be, Facebook. Using the top applications list, I found the names of six or seven of the top Facebook developers, people responsible for the pokes, the zombies, the trip maps and other online apps, and set about emailing them some basic questions for my article.
Big mistake.
After about five or six emails both my research and my Facebook world came to a shuddering halt as a message appeared telling me that I had violated Facebook's terms of use, and since I was clearly a nasty spammer my account would now summarily be suspended.
As none of the people that I was sending the emails to were on my friend list and since I was sending a fairly similar email to each developer it would appear that I triggered off Facebook's anti-spam mechanisms.
While I'm more than happy for Facebook to protect its system from real spammers, I was more than a little surprised that the first action taken by the system was immediate suspension from Facebook. Facebook appears to only take one metric into account when detecting spammers, without looking at other details of a person's account (friends, applications, login patterns) and immediately and automatically suspends their account, rather than perhaps taking an action like suspending the users email.
So now I'm in Facebook limbo, my account, my friends, photo albums all inaccessible. I can only wonder if I'll ever get to finish that Scrabble game with Benj, whether I'll ever see my travel map again, and I certainly now doubt that I'll ever get answers for that post I was going to write.
And what do my Facebook friends think of my sudden absence, have they even noticed? Were they notified that: 'Gordon is suspended because he is an evil spammer' or perhaps I just ceased to exist on their friend lists at all? Did they notice at all? Are my friends offended that I've disappeared, thinking that I had de-friended them for some unknown slight, online offense or quirk of my (clearly suspect) character? Perhaps they think that I've moved on,
to a new social networking site like Quetchup or perhaps a retro move back to Friendster or MySpace.
I wrote to Facebook on Saturday politely requesting that they return my online existence, but as of Monday there's yet to be a response. So, like the Fugitive I remain on the run, my name yet to be cleared, out of sight and out of mind to my Facebook friends. Things are getting desperate and I'm wondering where to turn for my social networking fix? Am I desperate enough to look to go back to Friendster? Boring enough for LinkedIn or Plaxo? Or desperate
enough to jump into the Second Life abyss?
Dear Facebook: can I have my life back, nicely?
