An Open Letter to Mark Zuckerberg and Company

URL of this page: https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/an-open-letter-to-mark-zuckerberg-and.html

But first, a note to all others reading this -

I am posting this to the many groups I frequent, particularly the Facebook groups that discuss belief and science. Group admins, please approve this post. It is relevant to us all.

And, dear readers, if a friend has shared this with you, please share it with your own friends in turn. Let's make it fan out. Go viral. Let's make waves! 

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To Mark Zuckerberg and company, an open letter.

I, Barry Desborough, am a very regular user of your website, and I bring a considerable amount of traffic to it. I think you should pay attention to what I have to say. I am one of your users without whom you would not have a business. Yet we get treated appallingly.

From time to time, I get a restriction. Here is a typical message from your AI (Artificial Imbecile).
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"You're temporarily blocked

It looks like you were misusing this feature by going too fast. You’ve been temporarily blocked from using it.

If you think that this doesn't go against our Community Standards, let us know."
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The first thing to note is that "this feature" is not specified. Is this a game? Do we have to guess what the feature is?

It's the same with "too fast". You do not specify what "too fast" is. How are we supposed to know what "too fast" means?

And "blocked"? What does that even mean? I have found, by trial and error, that I am blocked at the time of writing this from commenting on groups, but not other activities. You don't have the courtesy to tell what I am blocked from doing, and what I have not. But blocked just for using the main function of your site? No insults, hate or provocative or vulgar speech. No spam. No porn. Weirdly enough, I am not blocked from putting up original posts (OPs) like this one. 

And "temporarily? What does that mean? How long is a "temporary" block"?

Your pompously titled "Community Standards" (we are not a community, we are just a bunch of users) is so vaguely worded as to be useless. Again, you do not even try to specify which "standards" are supposed to have been violated.

And when you invite me to "let you know," Guess what? When I do let you know, 
I get threatened with the removal of my account!

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"You can't use this feature at the moment [I was using the problem report feature].

Warning! You  are engaging in behaviour that may be considered annoying or abusive by users. [No other users were involved.] Facebook's systems [read Artificial Imbeciles] determined that you were going too fast when taking an [unspecified] action. You must significantly slow down. Further use of [unspecified] site features may result in a temporary block [of unspecified duration] or your account being permanently disabled. [Which?]"
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This is just bullying. And disabling my account would be sheer vandalism.

I do not take kindly to threats, especially threats from pompous, jumped-up, officious pricks, and especially not from mindless 'bots. If there was an alternative site that had the reach and audience that Facebook has, you wouldn't see me for dust. You only have the presence you have by happenstance, and not by the technical quality of your offering, and certainly not by the quality of your "support".

So while we are here, here is a list of gripes.

When your warning messages come up, they interrupt what I am doing. On my own system. It's like someone snatching the pen out of my hand while I am writing. It is extremely rude. Use the notification system.

When a user leaves a page, it's not always possible to go back to previous pages. This is extremely frustrating at times.

Other systems have far better organisation, navigation and editing and formatting facilities. Take a leaf out of sites like Google Docs for post editing facilities, and from the old bulletin board systems. Your site is barely out of the teletype era.

There is no way to contact humans in Facebook, if you still employ humans. Surely you have enough revenue to pay people to respond to user's problems and issues? I recently had a technical problem, following your outage. All my (Chrome) machines eventually came back, but not my Android. I prefer to use it under the Chrome browser. I tried to reset the password. Your system failed to send me an email link to do so. Several times. Eventually, I found a workaround. It hadn't occurred to your geniuses. But again, you are too cheapskate to employ people to communicate wit users over technical issues, let alone 'disciplinary' ones.

My name is Barry Desborough, and you can contact me via my Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/barry.desborough or by email, which is my name with a dot in the middle at gmail dot com. 

Also see my FB group, https://www.facebook.com/groups/264676977548409

https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/an-open-letter-to-mark-zuckerberg-and.html