Facebook and spam: a race to the bottom

After a month of watching the new Facebook platform evolve, it seems clear that some of the app developers are willing to push the envelope and deceive users to grow.  This trend, if it goes unchecked, could massively undermine Facebook’s perception as a ’safe’ / ‘clean’ / ‘unspammy’ user experience.

I’m writing this blog to document this trend, in hopes of helping Facebook fix the problem.  While it’s easy to blame the app developers for the abuse, the true responsibility lies squarely on Facebook. It’s Facebook who sets and enforces the policies for the platform; they are the only ones who can reverse this trend; and they have all the tools they need to do so.

Perhaps the first deceptive experience I’ve had on Facebook is the following trick employed by Slide to get users to install their “Top Friends” app:

Using Top Friends, any user can choose which of their friends are “top friends”. Many other social networks (MySpace, Bebo, etc) already have a concept of “top friends”, but Facebook did not provide this native functionality, so Slide filled the void.

However, Slide’s implementation added viral hooks that are both unnecessary and deceptive. When you edit your Top Friends using the Slide app, each friend you add to the list receives a “Top Friends friend request.” The recipient is asked to “accept” or “ignore” this request.

Why is this deceptive? Because the recipient is fooled into thinking that they need to make a choice. In truth, the recipient has already been listed as a Top Friend of the sender; they have no choice in the matter (regardless of whether they “accept” or “ignore”). Naturally, most users click “Accept” – which has nothing to do with actually “accepting” anything, but rather leads them to add the Top Friends app themselves, and invite some new friends of their own, and so the app spreads.

By forcing every Top Friends user to send these unnecessary and deceptive requests to their Top Friends, Slide’s Top Friends has quickly become the fastest growing app on Facebook.