Dear Facebook: Bite Me
July 7, 2008 by Craig Stoltz
This ad on my Facebook page today:
Yes, Facebook, I’m 51. And yes, I’m overweight. *
But at least I have friends.
I wonder if you’ll be able to say that a year from now.
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* “overweight” only according to standardized Body Mass Index assessments, which are widely known to be highly inaccurate and often defamatory. I actually have really dense bones and an extraordinarily heavy head–it’s like a freakin’ anvil–so this targeting of me as an advertising prospect is unfair, wrong and possibly actionable.
“Dense bones.” Good one. ;)
Facebook needs to watch themselves… targeting ads is good business practice, but letting a user know you targeted them for something they could be sensitive about is bad practice. What’s next…? Waiting for you to change your relationship status from “married” to “divorced” and then displaying ads for alimony lawyers?
Agree fully.
I’m waiting for them to stealthily add photo-”reading” software so sometime soon they can target me as old, fat and *bald.*
[...] Entry titles are as important as content. Titles should be dead-clear. Web users are brutally impatient prowlers, unforgiving of ambiguity and unlikely to hang around to figure things out. But provocative works too. Three of my more inane items scored big because their titles promised some mischief: Hillary Needs a Widget; Dilbert, You Ignorant Slut; and Dear Facebook: Bite Me. [...]