Hi – I’ve directed you to this page because you’ve recommended a friend to me. I’m really pleased that you’ve done that. If there are people who know me and really enjoy what I do, it seems the most natural thing for me to interact with them on a social networking site. Unfortunately, Facebook don’t see it that way. Could you please recommend me to those people, so they can put a friend request in to me. The reason is outlined below. Big thanks.

I’m posting this information off-site, because I have found Facebook have become increasingly unreasonable in their policy towards friend requests.

“Numerous people have not responded to your friend requests. Sending friend requests to people who don’t know you is a violation of Facebook’s Terms. If you continue to send requests to people who don’t know you, you could be permanently blocked from adding friends.”

The message above is what I had to click “OK” to in order to continue using the service. The friend requests I made WERE to people I knew or people who had been recommended to me by valued friends. Notice the presupposition “people who have not responded to your friend requests do not know you” That’s not necessarily the case, is it? (this is one small example of what you have to agree to, to get back into your profile) I suggest this is part of what many people have started referring to as the new “Fashbook” experience (it’s certainly felt that way to me recently). Clicking OK infers that you agree to what they’ve written and that you accept it applies to you. In other words you are forced to misrepresent yourself in order to continue using the service. More importantly, there is now no way of appealing the decision. This is the email they send back to you:

Hi,

Thanks for taking the time to submit this report. While we don’t
currently provide individual support for this issue, this information will help
us identify bugs on our site.

To get answers to common questions and help
from other people on Facebook, visit:

https://www.facebook.com/help

Here’s a quote from a recent stream on the subject:

“They want to funnel you into using a music page so that they can start charging you to interact with people properly. They rewrote the algorithms for the pages so that your fans can’t see all your posts unless you pay them for the privilege…remember Facebook is not a service, you are their product!”

Playing their “game” would be pragmatic – I opted for using my Facebook profile instead of my page because I was uncomfortable with the pitiful “Please like me” message that was sent out to potential “fans” (and I was uncomfortable with the idea of “fans” instead of “appreciators”) Things have changed a bit since then, but I still prefer interacting with the “people” I’ve met on my travels through the profile.  The “game” in this case is underpinning a system used by a vast population comparable to that of India or China, and I feel very uneasy about large numbers of people being forced to misrepresent themselves (in any way) in exchange for the use of a service.  I’m preparing a page which discusses this in more detail. Once that’s done, I’ll refer friends to the links and Facebook won’t take any more of my time. After recent experiences, I now feel they don’t deserve it.

Thanks for helping me connect with people who like what I do. You’re a valued friend.

Ash 🙂