Comments on: Facebook has been hiding some of your important messages from you

By: uqbar

uqbar — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 21:24:53 +0000

The whole rationale behind Facebook is the exploitation of its users. Of course Facebook wants to make itself useful as a way to suck in more victims, but the welfare of users is a secondary concern. Every “free” Internet service is a trade off – Google “gives” you email, but sells your eyeballs to advertisers, and so on. But I have always felt that the tradeoff with Facebook was so lop-sided that it wasn’t worth using, and Facebook keeps proving me right.

By: Daniel J. Andrews

Daniel J. Andrews — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 23:24:55 +0000

I had two messages, one from 2007, one from 2009, wondering if I was such-and-such relation to so-and-so.

Thanks for pointing this out.

By: Mike Lewinski

Mike Lewinski — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 16:30:47 +0000

I’ve come to appreciate facebook as a clean place to communicate with just friends and family. No spam, no lists, no sales pitches, just friends and family.

So to me this rationale for this update (preempting spam problems that might drive users away) makes sense. I also think it could have been handled a little differently. Inform me repeatedly and obtrusively that it’s going to take effect on a certain date. Give me another icon that is solely for “other” messages so I can keep an eye on it if I care about unsolicited messages from non-friends.