Facebook Talk

Dear Facebook,

Hey there, old friend, it’s Goob. Remember me? I’m that guy who signed up with you way back when you were just a local Harvard experiment. I stood by you, through thick and thin, even deciding to open up a website in support of you when all those mean anti-news feed people were attacking you. Long story short, I think I’ve earned a little favor from your neck of the woods.

Well it time for me to curry that favor. Please, for the love of all that is Holy, fix your Gods damned auto-banning feature. Seriously, if I get one more e-mail asking why some highschool nerd had his account deleted when all he was doing was secretly poking the head cheerleader, I’m likely to go on a ten state killing spree. If another British person e-mails me asking why their account was deleted when they were posting on their friend’s wall, I swear I will spend the rest of my life trying to get the US and Britain in an all out nuclear war. It’ll be worth the collateral causalities just for the revenge factor alone. The least you could do is fix the site BEFORE you send your vice president of marketing and operations out to tout how awesome you are to potential investors.

You’re like the hot chick that I fell in love with before she discovered the glory of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. Come on, Facebook, you’re better than this. I know you’re stealing top programmers left and right from the likes of Google and Microsoft. Can you not spare one guy to sift through your code and figure out why so many people are being banned for no reason? Heck, better yet, just hire some bum for a fraction of the cost (where do I send my resume?) to do some basic freaking tech support and reinstate all the innocents who were banned!

I know you’ve got it in you, Facebook. Let’s see this happen.

Goob

Facebook made some news splash today by agreeing to over 40 tougher policies and safeguards for children using the site. Some of these new measures include “banning convicted sex offenders from the site, limiting older users’ ability to search online for subscribers under 18 and building a task force seeking ways to better verify users’ ages and identities.”

Hahahaha. Sorry, that task force line got to me. Like that’s actually going to happen and/or do anything worthwhile.

The deal was signed by Facebook and representatives from 49 states; the lone holdout being Texas. Apparently they’re not big fans of on-line protection of children. But they’ve got their guns, woooo haaaaa! *cue scene of crazy Texan from The Simpsons shooting two pistols in the air.*

I like Facebook’s approach here, but let’s be honest about something. What in the hell took so long? They rolled out the pointless applications feature a year ago and have already translated the site into Polish, but they’re just now getting around to setting making sure Mr. Convicted Catholic Priest isn’t trolling the site? Really? Whatever, I’m not a kid and my siblings aren’t foolish enough to go actually meet somebody they met on Facebook, so this doesn’t affect me much.

Wait, check that. I get plenty of daily e-mails (as you all know by now) from idiots, but I also get the occasional message from a concerned parent or teacher. They all want to make sure they’re children or students aren’t being harassed or seduced by the latest guy to have a sit-down with Chris Hanson. Before, I could do nothing more than send them an e-mail back saying I hoped their kids were safe too. But now, I can at least send them a link to this post. So thanks, Facebook!