Facebook Wants People To Pay (Them) To Spam (You)

Posted 2012-12-23 22:45
by Karl Denninger
in Company Specific

I thought I had heard it all.

Nope. Now Facebook wants to have people pay to spam you. But you don't get the money -- they do.

Here’s how it will work: A limited number of U.S. Facebook users will now have the ability to pay Facebook a fee to send a message other U.S. Facebook users who they don’t know. Facebook isn’t spelling out the cost publicly, but people familiar with the company’s plans say it will start at a dollar a message, and will tinker with the fee over time. The option will only be available to individual users — not marketers and brands — and Facebook will only allow users to receive a single paid message per week. But users can’t opt not to receive paid messages.

That's spam.

And worse, it's spam that Facebook is going to profit from.

I'd let people spam me for a buck a message, if I got to keep the money. In fact, considering that my spam filter catches something like 5,000 spam attempts a day in my email I'd make a hell of a living doing that!

But this little game of Farcebook's is all backwards.

They keep the money, not you.

You get the spam, not them.

If they have 50 users left once this goes into effect I'll be shocked.

Are you really iSheeple enough to keep using Facebook given their apparent intent to do this?

Note: This is probably legal under CAN-SPAM provided the messages are non-commercial in nature. They may not be, however, especially if delivered to a mobile device, if the content is commercial -- irrespective of whether the sender is a "company" or a "person." This is a new area and more than a bit gray, particularly since Facebook doesn't permit you to opt out of receiving them!

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