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Facebook is blowing it

Wed, 01 May 2013 20:24:00 +0000

While waiting for my coffee to brew this morning, I checked my Facebook News Feed on my iPhone. But instead of amusing updates from friends and family, in the space of just a few flicks of my thumb, I was assaulted by not one, not two, but three different advertisements for online dating sites. Worst of all, there she was, again! That giant-breasted zombie stalker from Mate1.com who has been chasing me across Facebook for years!

I know she's not real. I know she's just an advertisement. But I'm still terrified of that woman. I have nightmares of getting crushed by her mammary glands, squeezed to death like a boa constrictor kills a wild pig. I don't ever want to see her again, but no matter how I try, I just can't quit her.

When first we met, in my pre-smartphone days, she flashed her soulless come-hither eyes at me from Facebook's right-hand column. I swiftly learned how to click "hide this ad" and "hide all from Mate1.com." I'm a social media take-charge kind of guy -- tweaking privacy and ad settings comes naturally to me. But then, a couple of years later, not long (and not uncoincidentally) after Facebook's IPO, she invaded my News Feed. Once again, I dutifully clicked "hide this ad" and "hide all," albeit this time with a little less faith in the honorable intentions of Facebook's ad-targeting algorithms.

Online spat over spam jams whole Internet

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 12:39:00 +0000

A spat between a spam-fighting group and a large Dutch Web hosting service led to the jamming of crucial online infrastructure, causing temporary congestion for millions of Internet users worldwide.

Spamhaus, a group that helps Internet users avoid spam by adding sites believed responsible for sending out such content to a blacklist, added Dutch company Cyberbunker -- a (sometimes controversial) hosting service -- to its list. Cyberbunker's supporters hit back with a vengeance, with cyberattackers carrying out strikes that exploited the Internet’s core infrastructure, called the Domain Name System, or DNS. As a result, noted the New York Times, "Millions of ordinary Internet users have experienced delays in services like Netflix or could not reach a particular Web site for a short time." The Times reported that the "attacks are becoming increasingly powerful, and computer security experts worry that if they continue to escalate people may not be able to reach basic Internet services, like e-mail and online banking."

Facebook’s perfect spam laboratory

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 21:20:00 +0000

Every day has its own Facebook outrage story. Friday's entry: Mashable's discovery that the social media network was offering users the opportunity to send a direct message to Mark Zuckerberg's inbox for the low, low price of $100.

Actually sounds pretty steep, no? Certainly a far cry from December's Facebook announcement that it was testing out a much more inexpensive system that would charge only $1 to make sure your message got through, instead of being relegated to Facebook's mostly hidden "Other" inbox.

So what is it? A buck or a Benjamin? Or do "famous" people simply command higher price points? The Week got Facebook to shed some light:

In a statement, a Facebook spokesperson says, "We are testing some extreme price points to see what works to filter spam." In other words, the fee is an attempt to discourage people from sending annoying messages to people they don't know.