Facebook Bans Google+ Ads

Barbara, not Barbie writes "Not content with making it hard for people to export their Facebook contacts to Google+, Facebook has now banned all ads from app developer Michael Lee Johnson, who ran an ad saying 'Add Michael to Google+.' Facebook sent him the following message: 'Your account has been disabled. All of your adverts have been stopped and should not be run again on the site under any circumstances. Generally, we disable an account if too many of its adverts violate our Terms of Use or Advertising guidelines. Unfortunately we cannot provide you with the specific violations that have been deemed abusive. Please review our Terms of Use and Advertising guidelines if you have any further questions.'"

Also...

[Jessified]

Also in the news, Google bans Facebook from it's search results. Facebook complains, fails to see the humour of the situation.

Beginning of a Pattern?

[guttentag]

'Your account has been disabled. All of your adverts have been stopped and should not be run again on the site under any circumstances. Generally, we disable an account if too many of its adverts violate our Terms of Use or Advertising guidelines. Unfortunately we cannot provide you with the specific violations that have been deemed abusive. Please review our Terms of Use and Advertising guidelines if you have any further questions.'

In a nutshell: "Your account has been disabled, we won't do business with you anymore, and we can't tell you why." Did I miss something? Did Verizon [slashdot.org] buy out Facebook? Or are we simply seeing the beginning of a pattern in the way business is going to be conducted in the future to avoid the expense of having to pay a human being to deal with customers, and to avoid the possibility of writing anything specific that could be used in court or the media?

What ever happened to being blunt and frank, like when the Cleveland Stadium Corp responded [lettersofnote.com] to a complaint with a reply on company letterhead that read:

Attached is a letter that we received on November 19, 1974. I feel that you should be aware that some asshole is signing your name to stupid letters.

Very truly yours,

CLEVELAND STADIUM CORP.

Re:Also...

[dcollins]

I think there was a case last year where, for a day, Google returned someone else's blog as #1 when searching for Facebook (FB itself was #2). The blog comments instantaneously filled with hundreds of angry, misspelled, all-caps rants by people infuriated that Facebook wasn't letting them log in. It was hilarious (wish I could find it now).

Re:Also...

[Anonymous Coward]

A friend of mine does that routinely. She'll type in the complete URL in the search field, then click on the top result that comes back. Says it works fine, and told me where I could shove my helpful suggestion about the address bar...

Re:Also...

[poind3xt3r]

Facebook

> Did you mean: Google+

Re:Anyone want an invite?

[LynnwoodRooster]

I don't know... Your slashot UID is a bit too high for me to trust blindly...