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.'"

Re:Nonsense

[tempo36]

I once got the exact same thing from eBay once... ----------- Your listing has been removed. Our decision to remove your listings was based on several factors. Please take note that this removal is not to question your item thus a help in making your listings better, in making you a better eBayer and to improve your future sales. - Community members have expressed concern with the authenticity of previous items Due to the concerns stated above, please don't relist these items. If you do, your listings will be removed and you may be subject to range of actions, including buying and selling limits or suspension of your account. This helps protect you from receiving negative Feedback or low detailed seller ratings and also prevents eBay buyers from potentially bad shopping experiences. ---------------- When I called and asked what concerns had been expressed since I had 100% feedback I was told that there is no way to access the specifics of why the item was removed and that I should....read the ToS.

Re:Also...

[sakdoctor]

68,000,000 people per month google the phrase "www.facebook.com"

I take it you've never seen analytics for a website.
Many, many people use google as a sort of fuzzy address bar. They mash in something resembling the URL, and google sends them there.

Re:Days of the Facebook are numbered

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe in your circle of friends. But a billion posts in 2 weeks seems to disagree. Plenty of people don't use or want those extra "features" facebook throws at you but instead just want a way to keep in touch with friends in a more mature fashion than "john answered 6 or 8 questions right about marie, can you do better?"

Re:Fuck yeah

[phantomfive]

The timing is excellent, however. Shortly before Google+ was announced, I saw someone estimating a $1trillion estimate for the future valuation of Facebook. Now we are seeing that 75% of capital markets executives at investment banks believe that the multi-billion dollar valuations for many private companies are too high. [thestreet.com]. Some people are calling the Facebook IPO the greatest short opportunity ever [wallstreetdaily.com].

If Facebook doesn't IPO soon, the multi-year death-spiral will hit their investors first.

Re:Job-killing Tax Hikes

[Anonymous Coward]

History contradicts your assertions.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/File:MarginalIncomeTax.svg [wikimedia.org]

Tax rates for the rich were high through the "golden age" of the 50's and 60's: in fact, in 1953, when unemployment was lowest, the tax rate on the rich was close to its highest.

Jobs are created when money is in circulation. High taxes on the rich take money out of hoarding and put it into circulation. When taxes are low, the rich hoard money: sure, there's some investment in enterprise, but there's far more speculation in commodities, real estate, currencies, metals, etc. Except for real estate, these don't create jobs: commodities do fine without speculation, and real estate only produces jobs when it's residential or commercial and new and not-bubbly, not when it's about buying up farmland in central Africa (like some major funds now do).

Tax rates haven't been as low as they are now since the beginning of the Great Depression. It's periods of low taxation that sequester money and deprive free enterprise of demand for its products (that is to say, of the supply of money). Under low rates of taxation, only the super-wealthy gain, while the economy rots away, whereas under high rates of top-bracket taxation, the entire country grows richer, including the ultra-rich, but they just get richer more slowly.

Re:Also...

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe you're thinking of this:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_your_one_true_login.php
Still getting comments over a year later. Sort comments by oldest first to see the slew of stupidity.

Re:Well, that's one way to advertise....

[Miseph]

"Nothing stops your local provider from replacing those with local ads to block them"

Except for FCC regulations and contracts, and the inclusion of non-replacement clauses in their network contracts. The system is set up such that national broadcasts leave a chunk of time for local broadcasters, and local broadcasters leave a chunk of time for cable and other companies. Nobody overwrites anyone else's ads, because they actually can't.

Incidentally, the government can and does overwrite those time slots: that's what the EBS is for.

Re:Nah, we're outraged. Send the ad police!

[war4peace]

Now wait a minute.
Assume I am that developer and running those ads. Now Facebook comes and says "listen dude, we have blocked your ads. We are sorry. We feel your ads are negatively impacting us. Please either change them or run them elsewhere. Yes, we know it's not nice; yes, we know we might lose a bit of cash; but please understand our motives". Now I would be a bit pissed at them but I would understand.
I would even appreciate their approach.
But what they did is piss-poor judgement and reaction. Disabling the account altogether for clouded (yet duh!-style obvious) reasons? "We can't tell you why"? That's utter bullshit.
See, that's the difference between "some company nicely trying to protect their business" and "some company stomping on you head-on to protect their business".
Many, many EULAs say "we can disable your account for any reason or no reason" (anyone playing World of Warcraft? Yes? read it: http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/termsofuse.html [blizzard.com] - "BLIZZARD MAY SUSPEND, TERMINATE, MODIFY, OR DELETE ACCOUNTS AT ANY TIME FOR ANY REASON OR FOR NO REASON, WITH OR WITHOUT NOTICE TO YOU."). Sorry for caps, guys, it's the original shit.
And guess what. They actually DO it. Whether you hear of it or not is a different story. Most people don't publicly complain, and if they do, they don't gain momentum unless they're celebrities.
I was playing a rather crappy MMO and in our group's internal chat we were typing in Romanian. Now the game masters had no issue with private chatrooms using non-english languages; but they had a problem with their filtering bots. See, Romanian has a word (translated to English, it means "How") which is spelled "cum". And their filter reported me numerous times for abusing this word. So my account got banned (one game master actually was pressed enough to mention why). Needless to say, the account never got reactivated.

Anyway, the point is that companies AFFORD to be unethical. And they got your agreement to be so. Kinda sad if you think about it.