I’m getting a new kind of spam from Facebook, and unlike the endless notifications, as yet, it can’t be turned off.

For the past 6 months of so, I’ve found Facebook to be a very good, spam free way of keeping in touch with people. On signing up, I liked that pretty much everything there was designed to have some kind of utility to me, and nearly all of the content was generated by users.

When the API opened, all kinds of frivolous apps sprang up, but they were easy to ignore, hence not a problem. Notification spam was a hiccup in that respect, but the loophole got closed quickly.

In the past week though, I’ve been getting emails from applications my friends have added. Not from my friends, mind you, but from the applications (SuperWall, SuperPoke, Top Friends, etc., etc.), with the friend’s email merely used as the reply to. They’re automated messages, all generated from the same kind of template, such as (from memory):

* has shared SuperPoke! with you. Click here to tickle, pwn, hug, or even throw a sheep (among other things)!!!

—
This message was sent on behalf of * while using SuperPoke!
Click here to find out more or stop receiving these messages.

The messages link, of course, to the add application page. The only way to block them at present is to block the apps individually (I suppose removing all friends is technically another method). So I block one app, and get more of the same spam from different apps the next day.

Since when is it OK for application developers to have access to my inbox, even if they never see my email address? Never, that’s when. There should be an option for Facebook users to block application invitiations altogether, but as yet, there isn’t.

By getting users to click on the button that generates the message, I suppose the app developers are technically outsourcing their spam, but that doesn’t change what it is. It means Facebook is changing from something that cut down the time I spent dealing with junk email to being a source of it instead. Not cool.

The API is allowing some great stuff to be built, but the cost seems to be an ongoing tension between commercial growth agendas and basic social utility.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 24th, 2007 at 0:21 and is filed under Design, Media, Privacy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.