An Open Letter to Mark Zuckerberg

Hi Mark,

What’s up, Bitch? By the way, congrats for being the youngest billionaire, and the CEO of the 3rd highest valued company in US and making over 550 million friends. Hey, wait! They also include 250 million Farmers and Mafioso, 100 million disabled-accounts and 75 million fake (includes stray dogs n pets), out of which 50 million would be from India and rest 25 million are, perhaps, our neighbor’s contribution; thanks to Orkut’s decreasing popularity.

Good that you are coming up with an innovative and state-of-the-art technology Facebook Messaging (email) system as you discovered 4 billion messages getting sent each day. (What’s up with Groups? A big fail, eh?) Now we are sure the mails are going to be blocked half-way through, for your TERMS are going to be even longer! Longer than the 8189 paged Ayodhya Verdict, even a Federal Govt.’s rules and regulations. Do you also follow the terms set by you? Then why isn’t it possible to block you?

Well, it’s nice that with Facebook email, you are allowing attachments now. So, guys can send their masturbating videos to ladies they sex-texted before! Me? Sorry, I’ll still stick to Gmail for that. I do not wish anyone to see me while I am shagging away to glory. I need Privacy!

And then more blockages, more profiles disabled (but not deleted), new profiles added to Facebook and Voilà! Facebook’s counter shows 1 Billion profiles and soon to overtake population of China. Is this how you show the numbers to the whole world of Social Media?

Hey, I saw The Social Network. And my admiration and adulation for you knew no bounds after learning how you got this social-networking/dating site out basically! No wonder when you have disparaged your girlfriend and deceived your best friend, you will do very less to care about people’s privacy or their concerns.

Although your PRIVACY explanation is written in simple English, but your business rules are damn faulty! Do you test your privacy features at all? Automation, Manual…? Here are few nuggets and my observations on how you have been compromising your 500 million users’ privacy:

• Pandora, Yelp, and Scribd. Now you added Instant Personalization options. But hey why did you forget to notify users on homepage when you ‘checked’ Places by default for them under Account Settings> Notifications?

• Popular Applications/ ‘Apps’ on Facebook steal/transmit personal information.
• Your application developers sell user information to data brokers for money.

• Users set their Photo Album privacy to Friends Only (How am I so sure? Click ‘View Photos’ -> This content is currently unavailable) but if the wall is public one gets access to the published photos and to the entire album thereafter clicking ‘Back To Album’. WTF! Don’t you see the Ugly World of Morphing out there?

• Those whose friend requests are “Awaiting Confirmation” can still have my personal posts/photos/photo-tags reflected on their feeds! How outrageous is that?

With so much of privacy breach stories, no wonder why this Halloween, people had been wearing your mask!

Now, let’s speak about the DISABLED profiles, on who violated your Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, as per you:

• Thanks to your Share button people could share profiles they need to Report Abuse, on their walls. So, your Pinoy devotees have done the needful to my maiden & ‘Authentic’ profile.
• Why the hell can’t you give or send warnings before you disable a profile? Your automated response after two months of my appeal says,

Your account was disabled because your behavior on the site was identified as harassing or threatening to other people on Facebook. Prohibited behavior includes, but is not limited to:

• Sending friend requests to people you don’t know
• Soliciting others for dating or business purposes

Isn’t the reason ridiculous, Mark? For what effing good do you have these “Looking For” options in your Basic Info then!!! Looks like your principle-makers are only on Twitter!

• Have you ever had a chance to see how pissed people are because you disable profiles for reasons unknown? If not, have a check at http://facebookdisabled.org who are also on Twitter and have been reaching out to victims to sign the petition against your totalitarian attitude. Also, http://getsatisfaction.com/facebook. Not just a handful of them, there are millions, even bloggers at NetworkedBlogs. You could check your own Petition groups and this topic. And some ridiculous reasons as mentioned in this topic as well. Oh yes, the previous topic is written by a lady if you thought only “Male” profiles fell prey!

• You don’t have a mechanism to weigh the volume of data/IP content in each profile i.e. Photos, Albums, Videos, Links, Notes, Contacts etc. before disabling a profile? Why? You have an idea how agonizing it is to lose them & what a pain it is to upload them all over again!! And when friends are concerned, they think I have kicked them out from my list!

You know what man, I could go on, but I also have to mention about your “People You May Know” algorithms that usually pull out fake profiles with suggestive photos, which in turn invite one’s profile to be blocked again going by your Terms! You keep changing Facebook features every morning, without informing people what’s new on the site and let them accept whatever shit you offer! Do you know the recall of Publish Profile Picture feature on the wall has been a huge disappointment for users?

It’s an application and it would definitely have bugs. Do you just intimidate and block FRIEND REQUESTS or do you ever test your own application before letting it ‘Go-Live’? Did I just hear a deafening YES, then what’s this all about? And at times, when you post a comment, others don’t see it after sometime, makes one think he/she deleted it. Misunderstandings over FB now! WTF! Well, how many more times would you keep changing the useless SPAM filters for Amora/Anita/Astrology Predictions and all that shit app!

Although we’ve had a Quit Facebook Day on 31st May, 2010 fetching 37971 committed quitters, I understand it doesn’t make much difference to you, the ratio is just too less as compared to 500+ million active users, after all, right? But, keep your fingers crossed Mark, for this quitting no. would soon emulate your bragging FB figures.

You cannot do good to your users, the disabled and crippled profiles, all right, but if you could do this favor for the sake of mankind- PLEASE Unfriend Coal and keep the Planet Green and not make it Black instead. You’re CEO, Bitch! C’mon.

If you still cannot do any of these, then please change your name as suggested in the text editors.

Many Thanks,
Facebook-turned-Twitter Addict

 

Image (Zuck’s Mask) Courtesy: Gawker