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

When XIX Common Wealth Games 2010 – CWG was held in India!

CWG – I wish the acronym never had Wealth in it, so our dear IOC Chairman and the entire hierarchy under him wouldn’t have got misled. And would have rightly understood CWG is all about Sports but not unleashing Game Plans of Corruption to make enough Wealth for your seven generations.

Not-so-surprisingly, now we know many acronyms, have coined enough, simply a good no. to confuse us on what the original CWG stands for ,after a few days.
Even the Maoists must be aware of the ongoing disorganizations in New Delhi and would be having their wishful laughs looking at the mess. Not to forget the Porkistanis who on NDTV’s Facebook posts about CWG, keep swearing in the name of Lord, celebrating the failure as a curse for ‘Indian Occupation of Kashmir’.

The Shame and the Agony:

How would you feel as a ‘responsible’ citizen of India (please exclude our politicians) when the President of CGF, Mike Fennel faces embarrassing questions like “Has India let you down?”. Worse when he replies “we all would have learnt a lesson in working like a country like India. And at the end of all of this, India would have learnt a great lesson.”

How would you feel when these filthy images are 1st out on bbc.co.uk, titled ‘Athlete’s village’?  And you want me to be fraking positive about it! Why shouldn’t there be criticism? Why shouldn’t there be sarcasm or tantrums thrown out to Mr. Kalmadi n Co.? It couldn’t get more outrageous when they say that different countries have different standards of hygiene! It seems our IOC officials never flush their toilets and have paan-stains all over their wash-basin. But why-the-f**k feign it to be the standard for entire country and mislead outsiders on our image!

At least the officials should have an iota of conscience that any mess in such a huge international event would not only put the country to shame but also cause embarrassment to many Indians who go abroad to represent or work, who would be at the receiving end of any informal discussions.

A sporting event whose current investment would be hardly around  Rs.7000 crores is now estimated to be   Rs.77000 crores!!! Is there an end to the amount of corruption?

Mr. Kalmadi promised it to be the best Games ever, better than Beijing Olympics. Now it has turned out to be the costliest! This is definitely not expected from the CWG chief, who also has a defence background! I just hope it isn’t as bad as the ill-prepared Athens Olympics where they were planting trees even on the day of the Games.

A game whose bid was won in 2003 has turned out to be the costliest Games ever! Whose money is it? It’s mine and yours. It’s mere Tax-payer’s money, damn it! Isn’t Ajmal Kasab’s expenditure enough who’s yet to be executed!

But after all this, the most agonizing news you hear is Games Village is not ready. 180 Flats still in ‘unlivable condition’, athlete’s bed collapses, AC doesn’t work, no water in the toilet et al.

Role of Media:

The CWGPR is already doing its job of digging the positive out of the worse. But no, you cannot simply keep expecting media to bring about positive stuff out of Pandora’s Box. I would rather say Media has done a good job of busting out the means of corruptions and showcasing how CWG has become an event of cash cow for the IOC officials.

The news on CWG preparations has not been good since last 60 days or more. Yet, it didn’t ring bells for our politicians/bureaucrats to get things rolling at a breakneck-speed. The result – India is the world news for all wrong reasons. Thanks to their “Chalta Hai” attitude. Plus put it back on media.

Neither Media bashing all the time helps, nor should Media keep carrying negative news, at least once the countdown is over for heaven’s sake! Just because BBC showcased filthy pictures of the Village, all of them followed the same. Herd mentality. Nothing different was shown in the movie – Peepli [Live]. If Aussie/English/Kiwi media is bashing India then why is Indian Media backing them?

What we can learn from South Africa:

I am at loss of words to applaud RSA to have beautifully conducted the FIFA WC 2010. It doesn’t restrict to just one but 2007 ICC WC Twenty20 and two IPL championship events including the ongoing one. Despite racism issues and a massive AIDS prevalence among the population, they could deliver. Why can’t we, being the 3rd Most Powerful Nation in the World?

 

Lesson for future:

We continue to think time-n-again that all these money could have spent on poverty alleviation or Elementary education. Or better infrastructure for sports in general. But they would never be spent since there has to be a specific and dedicated program on these known and chronic issues.

So if at all we bid for such an event, we should be committed to it with heart and soul. Lest there is mismanagement, we should be accountable for it, accept blame rather than being arrogant and playing blame games.

When Sports Committee’s chairman has never played any games, how would he have the spirit then? These specimen shouldn’t be appointed as bureaucrats or ministers.

Not sure what’s in store ahead and after CWG. But there should be a probe and all those indulged should be charge-sheeted and made to pay the damage done to the entire image of the nation. We have to adopt the Chinese/North Korean way. Execute all those responsible for non-execution of the games!

CWG will still be a Success:

With issues every morning, looks like CWG is going to be less about sports and more about the issues faced by athletes. And they won’t stop cribbing now, even with the slightest of discrepancy that is possibly manageable.

Let’s have investments come into India and not go to China. We have brains but we have shitty politics-dominant-bureaucracy. Let’s not make this as a deterrent. Whatever it costs, whatever it takes, let’s make XIX Common Wealth Games a success! And it will be a success despite the odds!

May be we could just think the worse is over, and show solidarity as committed citizens.  Jai Hind!