Twitter, Facebook and now Google+ too are suspending accounts
During past couple of months, and especially last weeks, I have been reported of countless cases, where someones Twitter or Facebook accounts have been suspended. Now this has been spread to Google+, too. In all cases I know, all users have been plain normal users, who use their account from various computers and mobile devices. No spamming, no rude language, no obscene pictures – just plain social networking. Somehow it seems that the only problem is actually that networking.
I guess this is all part of that campaign, where especially Facebook tries to get rid of those fake accounts. Since you, the users are not customers in Facebook or Twitter department. Users are just a herd of cattle to be used and their assets sold to highest bidder. In this case the assets are any information that could be used to market and advertise products. So all you “thumbs up” and network connections are valuable commodity. Since it is now revealed that almost 10% of Facebook accounts are fake, many commercial players have started to shun Facebook and withdrew their presence.
So now their automatic systems are frantically searching for those fake accounts. But you have to understand, that this similar to filtering spam. There is no perfect spam filter in existence. Every spam filter will pass through some real spam and it will pick out so called false positives – emails that are not spam, but which filter believes to be spam. Same happens here. For some reason, some John Smith’s account is picked up and Wham!Bang! it is suspended.
One thing that really annoys me, is that these social networking services usually say that they want to get rid of spammers. Excuse me! How you can use e.g. Twitter to spam. Following anybody in Twitter is purely voluntary. Even if someone would be Tweeting spam every minute, all you have to do is to UNFOLLOW him. No more tweets, no more spam. Spammer is just shouting at wind. So, hello you Twitter-people, stop talking about spam. Twitter and email are totally different things. In email, you cannot protect your account from spam, since anybody can send you an email if he just knows the address. In Twitter you cannot force anyone to follow you.
Actually Twitter is a bit schizoid, since it can punish you if you follow too many, or too few or too many are following you. When I looked through those Twitter rules, mostly they just did not make any sense at all. I thought that the main purpose of social networking is to connect with people. But it seems that Twitter’s idea is a bit different – where are mostly connected to your inner self. Follow a couple of people more, Wham!Bang! you are suspended. Unfollow someone, Wham!Bang! Send too many tweets, Wham!Bang! Send too few tweets, Wham!Bang! Have too many or too few followers in contrast to people you follow, Wham!Bang! This is ridiculous.
It is almost similar, but not entirely, in Facebook and Google+. First they want us to connect with people, then they do not want us to do it. My advice is: just not be friend with someone, or do not put him into your circles. But you know what. This is not a great revelation, but a simple truth. We do not actually need those services at all. We could very easily drop them en masse, and perhaps we could actually have more time for real face-to-face communication with real people. I know, it sound scary talking to someone and seeing him at the same time, but let’s be brave.
So why not have a bit off-time from Twitter, Facebook and Google+ and actually go see your friends instead of just reading status updates from you mobile phone.
