I visit Facebook more often than I would care to admit. Maybe it’s because I’m tech-savvy, or maybe it’s because I love clicking the little red update notifications. In any case, while I was visiting the site tonight I noticed something called the Friend Finder on the home page’s sidebar.
Here’s what it looks like in case you don’t know what I’m talking about:
Now, I don’t know how popular this Friend Finder tool is. All I know is that I’ve never used it. And after refreshing the page a couple times only to see the friends change inside the box, I started to wonder something: Have these friends, the ones it says have used it…actually used it?
Nope!
I asked a few of my friends that were listed if they had ever used the service, and every one of them said they hadn’t. Now, I know I’m not alone when I say that some of the ways Facebook uses our information is wrong, and maybe even unethical. Honestly, this bothers me. Facebook used my friends, who hadn’t even used the service, to try and get me to use it.
What kind of company does that?
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Its misleading for sure. Is it a third party app or is defo Facebook doing it. Not a big facebooker personally.
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It’s Facebook’s own app. They’ve been pushing its use pretty hard since it came out. You basically give them your email address and it crawls through your contacts list, looking for people who are on facebook.
Here’s a few more interesting links about it:
I use Facebook to communicate with my friends that I wouldn’t normally talk to, and that’s about it. However, I question its use as a whole when they do stuff like this. I don’t want facebook using my information to lie to my friends and tell them I’ve used a service when I didn’t.
Tweets that mention Facebook « Chris Valleskey -- Topsy.com
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Chris Valleskey, Chris Valleskey. Chris Valleskey said: New post is up! I talk about Facebook, privacy, and misleading advertising. Feel free to share your thoughts. → http://dssurl.com/WZ [...]