Facebook thinks you're a spammer - and fat, too
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BY KIM HART / The Washington Post
For many, Facebook has become an indispensable tool for managing their social lives. But all the friending, messaging and poking on the social network has created a hazard: using it too much.
Elizabeth Coe found out after she sent a link to her company’s Web site to 100 friends and professional acquaintances. She got booted.
Through an e-mail a few days after she sent the link, Facebook said her account had been disabled for “persistent misuse of the site.”
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My Facebook page called me fat.
Maybe it's my age, my sex or the fact that it knew I was engaged, but the site decided I was a gal who needed to drop a few pounds. And it wasn't shy about its tactics.
Every time I logged in to my home page, Facebook's ads screamed at me with all the subtlety of a drill sergeant: "MUFFIN TOP." This particular ad had a picture of someone with said affliction (a woman in too-tight jeans with a roll of flab hanging over her waistband).
I posted a status update that said, "Rachel doesn't appreciate her Facebook page telling her that she has a muffin top."
Facebook targets its advertising to users based on the information in their profiles. This is not a new concept, of course. Kids usually see toy ads while they watch Nickelodeon, and women get ads for birth control pills as they watch Lifetime.
But Facebook's data miners know much more about us because we tell them a whole lot more. Facebook knows my birthday, my relationship status and which book I'm reading, among other personal tidbits. The site started turning this information into dollar signs last November with the launch of Facebook Ads, which targets users' presumed areas of interest (or psychological soft spots).
Basically, the subliminal goal of product advertising is to make you feel inadequate and ashamed, because you're not perfect. Your teeth are yellow. Your armpits stink. You're fat. And hairy.
The targeting technology itself will be familiar to users of Google's Gmail, which generates ads based on what its users type in the body of an e-mail. TiVo and Netflix both suggest programming based on what you've been watching. (Remember the "My TiVo Thinks I'm Gay" episode of "The King of Queens"?)
Facebook spokesman Matt Hicks summed up the appeal to advertisers:
"If you're a wedding photographer, do you want to waste your money advertising to a general audience? Or do you want to reach those that are engaged?"
After my quaint status update about the muffin top ad, Facebook got even more vicious, like a schoolyard bully provoked by my initial reaction. With the knowledge that I was engaged to be married, the site splashed an ad across the left side of the screen playing into a presumed vulnerability. "Do you want to be a fat bride?" Learn how to lose weight before the big day.
I fought back harder. I clicked a little blue link that said "Report" and filled out a form.
A drop-down menu gave choices: Was the ad "misleading, offensive or pornographic?" I chose offensive. Facebook thanked me for the feedback and said it would take appropriate action, though I shouldn't expect any notification about this action.
Nothing changed. Facebook continued its onslaught of muffin-top and fat-bride taunts. I averted my eyes and tried to remember that saying about rubber and glue. I didn't spiral into a body-image crisis, nor did I start to diet. But there's got to be some kind of psychological toll wrought by so many weight-loss images each week.
I investigated further, and obtained a document for advertisers called "Common Ad Mistakes." In it, I found this nugget: "Text may not single out an individual or degrade the viewer of the ad." It even gave an example of a diet ad that uses unacceptable language: "You're Fat. You don't have to be."
The muffin top ad is no more; whether the advertisers stopped using it by choice or by force, Facebook spokesman Hicks wouldn’t say.
Other changes are afoot at the site. Last month, it beefed up its advertising guidelines, in part to address the diet ads. Any ads that refer to health or medical conditions can go only to users 18 or older, and they must “present information without portraying any conditions or body types in a negative light.”
Also in July, Facebook launched its new interface, which includes “thumbs up/thumbs down” buttons beneath ads so users can receive the ones that are more relevant to them.
I assumed that the diet ads would subside after I changed my relationship status from “engaged” to “married” in May. They did. I now receive these:
“Trying to get pregnant? Visit our site now. We’re a national network of fertility specialists treating male and female infertility.”
Thanks, Facebook, for calling me barren.
- Rachel Beckman, The Washington Post
Facebook, she concluded, thought she was spamming her friends.
“All I was doing is using it to communicate more efficiently, which is what I thought it was for,” said Coe, 25, of Centreville, Va. “I don’t feel like I was violating any code of ethics.”
Others have been kicked off the popular site for adding too many friends at once; sending too many messages; joining too many groups; or “poking” too many friends. Shunned Facebookers said the punishment contradicts the site’s core mission — to help people connect and communicate.
“Facebook is shutting down accounts of users who are exhibiting any behavior it finds remotely suspicious,” Thor Muller wrote in a post called “13 Reasons Your Facebook Account Will Be Disabled” on GetSatisfaction.com, which offers customer-service advice. “As paradoxical as it sounds, ‘suspicious’ often means just using the site too much!”
A large part of Facebook’s appeal comes from its ability to connect casual or distant acquaintances, such as high school classmates or friends of friends, said Matthew Salganik, assistant professor of sociology at Princeton University. But with 100 million users, shutting down accounts for questionable activity has become increasingly important. The network faces the challenge of allowing members to communicate when and how they want without inundating one another with a flood of messages.
Facebook’s success also means that it must combat a growing amount of spam, bogus links and hoax messages, some propagated by malicious software that make it look like such messages are coming from friends.
About 64 large-scale spam attacks have been reported on social networking sites over the past year, and 37 percent of users have noticed an increase in unwanted messages in the past six months, according to Cloudmark, a Web security company.
Many spam attacks bombard hundreds of unsuspecting users with identical messages. So if a user sends a legitimate message or link to dozens of friends during a short period of time, he or she may be flagged by Facebook as a potential spammer.
Because of the rise in spamming attacks, including several incidents last week, Facebook has tightened its security systems and is deactivating accounts for behavior that seems at all suspicious, said Brandee Barker, the company’s director of corporate communications.
“Accounts may have been deactivated not necessarily because of their activity, but because of the precautious we’ve taken,” she said.
Users who have been disabled will be reinstated on the site by e-mailing the company if they prove they’ve done nothing wrong, she said. “Because of recent security incidents, we’ve been overly cautious. We are working as quickly as we possibly can” to reinstate legitimate users.
Barker said users should avoid sending friend requests or identical messages to a lot of people at once. If a user needs to communicate the same message to more than 20 people, he or she should start a group rather than send individual messages, she said. While she declined to give specific limits, she said a general rule of thumb is to “go slowly with everything you do on the site.”
Lisa Shane used Facebook to organize her high school reunion. Repeatedly sending the same messages to more than 200 people raised a red flag for Facebook.
A week before the reunion, she lost access to her account, as well as her contacts; RSVP list; and details about the venue, which she’d also arranged on Facebook.
“More and more people are using social networks to keep up important work contacts and to put together huge events,” said Shane, of Baltimore. “If I can’t count on that information being there when I need it most, just for using Facebook for its intended purpose, it makes me wary of using it to build contacts.”
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Weird wrote on September 5, 2008 5:24 pm: