Loading ...Earlier this week, Facebook got handed a lawsuit from a man whom it claims is a spammer. The accused David Fagin, an AOL News Writer and musician, decided to make his story public after uncovering, what he considers to be, an even greater problem from the social giant.
When he tried to connect with Facebook and defend himself, he found that the company does not have any customer support. He believes this is a very big problem for a company of Facebook’s magnitude, especially given the fact that its users range from all ages.
“This is a problem that, if it’s ignored, it’s not going to get better; it’s going to get worse,” he said.
As a result, Fagin has filed a lawsuit against Facebook for $1. Since the value is so low, it’s obvious that the principle of the matter is his bigger objective. He told WebProNews that he would like to raise enough awareness to ensure that the government would somehow require Facebook to incorporate customer support.
For anyone that has had a similar experience on Facebook, Fagin asks that they email him.
Update: Fagin has also created a Facebook group as part of his initiative.
Facebook didn’t tell him to friend request all those people he didn’t know – it simply suggested that he might friend them if he knew them. Facebook didn’t say he was a spammer – apparently all the people he friend requested flagged him as a spammer!
totally agree – if you want to market on any internet site you have to play by their rules. Jonny no mates!
Adam,
The add-a-friend feature doesn’t work that way. It will, at random question if you know someone and not allow you to add them — or do so with a warning. They did this when I went to add my brother and I hadn’t added anyone in months.
You can trigger this response from them, let’s say if you connect with the President of your local Toastmaster’s group and notice 20 of your members are connected to that President, but you didn’t realize they were on Facebook — you begin to request an add from these people you know that you found on the President’s page — and boom! Facebook stops you and says you are a spammer.
Don’t get me started on trying to find good help support when you are stuck with a problem on their site. You have to look for some user who has hopefully posted a solution to their Facebook page.
David isn’t the only one to see that the Facebook Emperor has no clothes . . .
Dear Facebook,
I need a job you really need live customer service for your site spend some dollars and train people.
David i agree with you made a good point.
here here David, fair points made.
I totally agree 100%. The fact of the matter is there needs to be some kind of way to get in contact with a company of this magnitude. Even if you agree with Adam that he did this to himself thats besides the point. Lets say you are getting harassed by an ex, or a recently divorced spouse. Or for example like me I had an error and wasn’t able to log into my account. All I got was a pop up message that said sorry you can’t log in and someone will try to fix it??? Well after a month of the same exact problem what the hell can I do? There is no number, email, or any type of way to contact anyone at all.
Oh and lets not forget you can’t even get to the Help/FAQ page in facebook unless you have an ACTIVE and registered account that works. WTF? So they have all your private information, make millions of dollars off of all of us, tell us what we can’t do but they can do anything they want with all our information. And they are allowed to stay silent and ignore all the problems they create? Or how about the simple common sense that if they allowed us to at least email or do a wall post to state problems or errors that they could fix them all quicker and faster which would in turn create them even more money.
This is a huge company that makes tons of money, has tons of advertising, and has the most personal information on more people than any other place on earth, and they blatantly ignore most of there customers. Gee I sure can’t do that in my business. Must be nice to be rich, get free food all day at work and all the other perks facebook employees get with no accountability. There just simply needs to be some accountability. And the simple fact is can you even think of another business or place that has 100% no customer support. If your bank, supermarket, and everyone else needs one they do too.
Yea facebook is a bit different and I too love it and use it everyday but its still a simple problem with a simple fix. There blocking peoples rights to due process. If you threaten or charge someone with lets say being a spammer with no way to say umm hey no im not, how is that any different than being charged for a crime because you were there and looked like the criminal but they didn’t allow you to talk to defend yourself. Although it may be trivial its the same premiss and the same reason that all people who are arrested are treated and charged in the same way.
David is right. Facebook may not have made David send out the friends notices, but; they in fact encouraged him to do so via the way the site is setup and there is no policy AGAINST contacting friends of friends in that fashion. It is in fact encouraged to add friends of friends via facebook and many other facebook API’s and knockoffs across the web.
If Facebook wants to be the big guy on the block, they have to play by their own rules and it seems clear in such a case that they do NOT. Sue the hell out of David
Thx so much, David for bring this out. Hope something is done about this. One other thing, I hate it the verification that is required now on Facebook i.e provide a valid phone number of credit card to perform certain actions such as create an app etc
Great video. I hadn’t really given any thought to FB’s inaccessibility until just now. I have luckily had very few issues that needed any sort of ‘help’ but was getting used to using their online FAQs. Since I use social media for work I would hate to imagine a day that FB banned my account. David is right… it would pretty much end my ability to do business the way I’ve now become reliant upon.
I have worked with another person assisting them to open an account on Facebook. They were denied the ability to open an account because they didn’t believe they were a real person. I didn’t want to post his name but he is a real person. It took him a few months after continually trying to contact them with no avail. We created a page begging Facebook to let on facebook.
I think they are definitely lacking in the support area.
I logged onto your video on youtube and watched with great interested. Facebook have done this to me – TWICE! All I am doing with Facebook, which is a social networking site, is trying to find “friends” to come and visit my Production Company page in order to build up a worldwide following. Is that such a crime?
If Facebook is a Social Networking site, a BIG networking site, then saying that I am not aloud to invite friends, that, as you say, they suggest to me, is just not right. I must add, this makes me angry
Your a fucking retard. These are filters set up to stop real spammers, if you planned on adding that many people then you should of contacted face book so that your able to add more than usuall, ie. celebs/large businesses. Not to mention if people want to add you they will, so ovbisiouly nobody likes you. You are the biggest looser because you are using a well known business to create a bigger problem to create huge publicity, so that you may have free advertissing.
So dude seriously get a fucking life, be origional not a cheat
I normally do not comment on these boards, however, after seeing your comment I had to.
I find it quite ironic that you call this relatively well articulate man a “retard”. He was answering questions on the spot, on camera, and was still able to come across with more intelligent than you. You, who had all the time in the world to think about what you were going to write before writing it and yet, somehow, were still able to came off as childish, at best.
Your overuse of the “F” word, juvenile name calling and many, many misspellings show a limited intelligence. My best guess is that you are really 15 years old and while I’m sure your other 15 year old buddies think it is really cool to throw out the F Bomb in every other sentence or to call someone a “retard”, my advice is if you want to be taken seriously you really need to expand your vocabulary.
However, if you are over the age of 18, with your use of the words “retard” and “loser”, the old adage comes to mind “People in glass houses should not throw stones”. I do not know if you were so passionate about this quite mundane subject you completely forgot how to speak, spell or literate or if you are simply “intellectually challenged”. Either way I think is about time to grow up, don’t you?
I agree with you 100%. I too have received that message. Owning a popular nudist resort in Palm Springs, I have also had photos deleted and have been threatened to have my account deleted for showing back nudity. Yet, Facebook allow ads by Victoria Secret’s and other places showing way more skin.
And you’re right, thre is no one to complain too except to go to the press. That’s what art school’s have had to do, what breastfeeding groups have had to do, what breast cancer groups had to do, Motley Crue’s Nikki Sixx had to do, etc. Each time Facebook apologized. But, why do you have to go to the New York Times or other publication to get facebook to correct a problem?
I agree with David. Even if Facebook outsourced their customer service to India and the reps only spoke Hindi, it would be better than what they have right now, NOTHING!
Google disapproved my Adwords (twice) in an attempt to censor my consumer alert landing page at http://Fair-Trading.com/reports/ready-flowers.html for breach of its ‘Anti’ and Violence policy.
The Google censorship requirement was clearly grounded on false information and was ridiculous. I thought I had no recourse, but when I threatened to sue for breach of contract Google changed its mind.
The correspondence is here, http://Fair-Trading.com/reports/google_freedom_of_speech.pdf
Okay, so he works for AOL, the number one company that has had the worst track record for customer service and he is suing for customer service?
If Mr Fagin thinks he needs to live on Facebook then he is lost beyond any lawsuit will help him.. He’s a journalist?? LOL
Good for David,
I am glad he is taking action. I recieved the same bogus warning message however I was not banned or suspended. I think it’s a poor policy and an un-professional representation of the sophmoric client care that should be shown to Facebook’s members.
Facebook, get a clue and get a live customer service branch!
Mark
A friend of mine tried to login to her facebook page recently only to see a message telling her that her account had been “suspended” because content had been posted on her page which violated facebook’s terms of service. She had no idea – and still has no idea – what content they were referring to. She was just an ordinary facebook user who used the site to keep in touch wit her friends. She is adamant that she hadn’t posted spam or illegal content of any kind. She emailed facebook to ask why exactly her account had been closed, and requesting that it be reactivated. Several days later she received a terse reply to the effect that she had violated facebook’s terms of service and that her account had been “permanently disabled”. Further emails bounced as “undeliverable”, and she was unable to pursue the matter via the facebook website because in order to do so it is necessary to login! And that was it. She lost contact with over 300 fb friends (more than half of whom were people she knew in the “real world”). Not only that, a group she had created as a repository of information, photos etc for her family also disappeared – along with hundreds of photos (uploaded by family members over a three-year period), information, documents, emails (fb private messages), links etc. All permanently deleted without warning and without explanation. And, as David Fagin says in this video, there was absolutely no mechanism in place to question facebook’s action or obtain an explanation. They decided, for reasons known only to themselves, to terminate my friend’s account, and with a single click they disconnected her from the network of friends she had spent years building up, and erased photos and files that were highly valued by herself and her family. This is really quite outrageous and unacceptable, and clearly something needs to be done about it.
They (FB) suggest us to make friends through their recommendation, but then call us spammer and banned us for several days cause of adding all those suggestion friends!
Hi again,
I’ve been doing a bit of research into this since I posted below, and it seems that this is really a major problem, with thousands of facebook users having their accounts terminated (and their data los) every day on a wide range of pretexts, includding accusations of spamming, copyright infringement, identity theft etc. The recurring theme is that accounts are closed without warning and without facebook having to provide any evidence to support their allegations. Basically, they can – and do – dump their users on a whim, or on the mere suspicion of breaking facebook’s rules. I was also surprised and alarmed to discover that facebook routinely shuts down the pages of action groups, again without notice or explanation. Within the last 24 hours, for example, facebook has taken down the pages of the following organizations:
Open Birkbeck
UWE Occupation
Chesterfield Stopthecuts
Camberwell AntiCuts
IVA Womensrevolution
Tower Hamlets Greens
No Cuts
ArtsAgainst Cuts
London Student Assembly
Beat’n Streets
Roscoe ‘Manchester’ Occupation
Bristol Bookfair
Newcastle Occupation
Socialist Unity
Whospeaks Forus
Ourland FreeLand
Bristol Ukuncut
Teampalestina Shaf
Notts-Uncut Part-of UKUncut
No Quarter Cutthewar
Bootle Labour
Claimants Fightback
Ecosocialists Unite
Comrade George Orwell
Jason Derrick
Anarchista Rebellionist
BigSociety Leeds
Slade Occupation
Anti-Cuts Across Wigan
Firstof Mayband
Don’t Break Britain United
Cockneyreject
SWP Cork
Westiminster Trades Council
York Anarchists
Rock War
Sheffield Occupation
Central London SWP
North London Solidarity
Southwark Sos
Save NHS
Rochdale Law Centre
Goldsmiths Fights Back
These are groups formed by people campaigning on a range of political, social and environmental issues, and facebook is denying them the (constitutional) right to express their views or use facebook to attract support for their causes. Surely this is in direct conflict with people’s rights (in the US, anyway) as guaranteed by the First Amendment? If so, this would make facebook unconstitutional.
Wow, Facebook took down that many pages?
As a corporation they still have much to learn in terms of professionalism – randomly shutting down pages, allowing a message “anyone” feature & not providing direct human support is pretty shoddy behavior when you have a 650 million peoples data…
(above are my personal views)
I second that the system.
And well said David.
Almost the same post as http://www.webpronews.com/man-sues-facebook-to-prove-need-for-customer-support-2011-04#comment-84572 and my answer is the same as there:
” It is not new to me that social networks are not really “social”, I have a problem with “sitetalk” wrote 3 emails to them and still no response, FB I left long ago when I wanted to play one of their aps and their policy demand that I should let them use any online and offline private info.
I’am a computer savvy for about 28 years and I know that there are things that it would be better to be left alone, one of them is social networks.
We need to show that WE have power over them and make the “no social network” day once a month, the 15th, just one NSN day a month for yourself ”
AGAIN, MAKE THE 15TH OF EACH MONTH AN NSN DAY!!
He’s right 100%. Adding friends is NOT a means of spam! Adding friends is just that, ADDING FRIENDS! Spam is when you send junk to someone to advertise or sell something and adding friends is not what that is. Also, the friend adding system is all messed up anyway. They will let you add certain persons and not others. How do they know if you know somebody or not? They don’t! If you try to add someone that you multiple friends in common with, there should be no question at all as to if you know them or not. Also, many people know others from many different states and different countries too. Not all of everybody’s friends are local to their area and if someone has moved, maybe NONE of their friends are from their local area. Also, sometimes the system will let you add a person from a foreign country and then not let you add your next door neighbor. These are NOT filters to block spammers, but are filters to determine who THEY think you should be able to know. Sometimes they won’t let you add someone you know, but that person can add you. Now that one makes no sense at all whatsoever. With their system, everytime one of those boxes pops up to tell you that you can’t add that person, it counts against you. It also does so even if you click the link within it to report it as a problem. After so many of those boxes, you get blocked. After repeat time, you get blocked for even a longer period of time. Finally, there’s a final warning to tell you that the next time it will be permanent. Where they came up with the idea that adding friends can be labeled as an act of spamming is beyond me, but it’s not. The act of adding friends is no more that that, just adding friends. Only spamming itself is spamming. On MySpace or ANY OTHER SITE OUT THERE, you can add all the friends you want to. Just like Facebook, the person that receives the request does have BOTH the option to accept or deny the friend request. Remember, spam does NOT come by adding friends, it comes by sending it to friends or others too. If they are so worried about someone sending spam, then add one more option to everybody’s profile. Add an option to not allow yourself to receive friend requests then. Problem solved!
Do you think Facebook is trying to control what we say and who we say it to? You mentioned Myspace and “ANY OTHER SITE OUT THERE”. Why do you thing Facebook would want to do things differently?
Interestingly, today I got a post on my wall from one of my facebook friends. It said it had a have to see video of Bin Laden being assassinated. As prerequisite to see it, you were taken to a facebook page that was liked by 500 000 people. Then they have instructions where you have to copy and paste some code into your browser window.
It looked fishy from the onset, and when I read the javascript, it basically ran an ajax refresh on the page which executed an external javascript that would access all my friends data and send them all personal messages from me, inviting them to the same page I went to. I am sure along the way it would also be harvesting emails as it went along. I reported the page as spam, and minutes later as I wanted to tell others about it, Facebook even blocked the url to the external js bcause I could not post it in a status update. About 30 minutes later, there was a chat that opened up, saying click here to see what you are going to look like in 20 years. It was from one of my other friends, and sure enough, the link lead to another facebook page, with similar instructions to the previous one. They also had heaps of likes. Looks like people are just stupid enough to keep on redistributing this. I think Facebook is getting a little big now, and it´s a definite security and privacy risk.
Correction, pasted into your address bar
Pingback: Facebook Sued by Minor Over “Social Ads” | WebProNews
I totally agree with you David. It’s always a drag when you need a question answered quickly or help with a account problem and you want to talk with someone, not something like voicemail. I also choose the spam answer too and agree that they have double standards.
I totally agree w/ David. I’ve had the same experience using the friend suggestion from fb also. Even most of the ads you see on the right side are “spam”. When I click on the ‘x’ to close them, they want me to select an answer why I closed the box. I choose the ‘spam’ answer. They need to evaluate their double standards.
Pingback: Facebook Sued by Minor Over “Social Ads” | Popular Events
I think more people need to be aware of this so that FB users can see why companies that dominate or are the prime service provider, be it Cable TV, mobile service provider, IP provider, etc, etc…..become oblivious to the small user. Only till something out of the ordinary happens, get sued of huge amounts or,(and this is my favorite) another player will come in and everyone will jump ship. Only then will they eat humble pie on their knees but it will be too late.
And Google is in the same situation, very difficult to find support them, and often u are ignored !
Facebook doesn’t have customer service is not a suprise, since they don’t have any real people working here either. (smdh) the movie proved that. I use facebook as a linkback because thats’ really all it’s good for. anything you post on there is like throwing a dart into the ocean; so forget about any social networking credibility build from being on there. it’s just a url/phonebook wanna be. maybe oneday they’ll grow up and start acting like it’s a real company since they make so much money off goofing around with peoples’ reputations. Bahhh Humbug is right. Good Work David – you’re making a difference.
It is time facebook buck up on their customer service.
It will do us all good.
Sometimes i have difficulty adding friends on facebook.