Facebook Slapped Me On The Wrist
Facebook is mad at me, or so it seems. I think they want me to take a timeout…
It seems that Facebook likes to put limitations on certain things. Earlier this week, I was accepting a few friend requests and requested a few friends when I received the “strike 1″ red alert message. It basically said “Stop! You are making friends too quickly!.” And then it rambled on about how I would get disabled for a few days if I kept going.
I suppose this started happening since I created this blog and have been meeting a lot of new people from around the world. I get a few friend requests everyday but nothing I would consider “too much.”
So this got me to thinking, why would a social network as big as Facebook have to apply such limitations. I mean, isn’t the point of a networking site to meet new people, regardless if you have actually met them in person? I have a lot of friends that I have never met in person but still talk to them often, does this mean they are not an actual friend? I think not.
I decided to do some research and see what I could bring up about these Facebook limitations that no one seems to actually know about until they get a warning.
I managed to find a ton of people complaining about the same types of messages. I even found a great article, “13 Reasons Your Facebook Account Will Be Disabled,” which talks about the common reasons peoples accounts get disabled.
Now some of these reasons I can agree with. For example, I can see why not using your real name might cause some suspician and get you banned from Facebook. But adding to many friends and poking too many people? Come on!
It turns out, they even have a friend limit of 5,000 people on Facebook. Once you hit the magic number of 5,000, people will recieve the “So and So already has too many friends” message when trying to add you. Yeah, I suppose 5,000 friends is plenty for most users of Facebook. But then again, my goal of this blog is to make myself famous, so I just might make 5,000 friends along the way…Ha Ha
The creators over at Myspace have set no limitations on things like friends, messages being sent, or how many people you can send things to. I think this is the way a social networking site should be. Why limit anyone from getting what they want out of a networking site?
So I am interested to see if this happens to a lot of other people. If it has already happened to you, please drop me a comment and let me know how it went.
Also, feel free to add me on Facebook, might as well go for “Strike 2″. I can’t wait to see what this red alert message will say. Maybe something along the lines of, “We weren’t kidding, there is a Facebook van outside your apartment and we are keeping our eyes on you!”
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I had the same thing happen, only mine was for joining to many groups. For some reason, 200 is the magic number you are allowed to join. I really don’t understand all the limitations, but then again, its Facebook.
March 12th, 2008 at 10:12 am
I didn’t know they did this. Sounds a bit stupid. Maybe if we get enough people they will change it.
Perhaps its to stop those friend adder programs. That could easily be fixed though through those CAPCHAS or whatever they are called.
March 12th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
I didn’t even know they had a warning system, let alone that they warned you for “making too many friends.” That’s just ridiculous, in my opinion. You make them extra friends, and make them warn you again for being too popular!
March 12th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
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March 12th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Wow, Facebook surprises me yet again. I hope you continue to add and make as many friends as possible. You will have to keep us posted on what happens.
March 13th, 2008 at 11:02 am
Yes, I am addled by the inanity of such restrictions. Even if your only object is to proliferate your friends roster with superficial or random contacts, then let that be the decision of the profile user. IF, this site is intended for adding your true friends or even casual acquaintances, then lets stop the foolish “search” engines for people via other networks. True, this is a viable method of locating lost (cough) friends; if they were true chums you would not have to do this. Seriously, this site offers the convenience of finding people you are somewhat concerned about, or genuinely do care for. But the networking feature contradicts the “limit” imposed on users by adding too many friends. It is intended on making friends by implementing this feature. If facebook is concerned about random and popularity augmenting of adding too many friends, then they should abdicate the “search”, “browse”, and “networking” options. Oh no!!! The true concept, and context, as I infer, of facebook is to display your real friends, meet new friends, inundate profile with silly pokes, glitter, personality quizzes, and enjoy the suspense of meeting random others without the hassle of filling your day with an exorbitant amount of attending every single social gathering known to man in order to create friendships or self promotion. I recently enlisted onto facebook and it, by far, is nowhere near the excitement as Myspace. Sure, it may offer a tad more class, due to the context from which it derived; school, work, etc. Plus potential employers, probation officers, etc. often, from what I ascertained, utilize this to spy on unsuspecting individuals. So it behooves people to remain discreet and cautious of what they say. I supposed I digressed from the issue at hand on a tangent. How about it should be of no concern in any fashion to the creators of this site of what people do as long as it, in no shape or form, violates the safety of anyone. How can I be able to make unsupervised contact, at least I think, with minors and be disallowed adding too many friends? At least they interdict the application of nudity here, as expected. However, I may be as salacious (lewd) as I feel I need to be during my introduction of myself. Do they not screen the content of your personal declaration? We may even disclose our phone number and address. I can conceive the friends limit may preclude cyberspace stalkers from employing “trojan horse” type methods of obtaining personal info. However, facebook can place a lets say five friend limit, and this still wouldn’t be sufficient in safeguarding from these nefarious characters. Maybe a more viable way of countering random, and sometimes unwanted requests, is to require somebody to enter the prospective friends’ information, e-mail add., last name, etc., prior to submitting a request. The privacy option provides the user of setting these options. So, what is the real purpose of limiting friends requests? Maybe this is a premonition of what maybe to come. Nothing is free and perhaps you may have to pay in order to be able to take advantage of the “real” intended purpose of facebook!
April 2nd, 2008 at 10:16 pm
Thank you very much,your site is perfect.
April 6th, 2008 at 11:55 pm
Ah, help me! I JUST started facebook like 3 days ago and now they’ve disabled me. Is this a JOKE!? I mean, I’m completely new…and I just started adding friends and they said I had too many within one session? Eeeeek, now it’s been like a week, and I am getting NO response from Facebook! It took me forever to get it together, now they just take it from me. Urgh, WHAT DO I DO, I’ve e-mailed probably every e-mail address Facebook has gotten. I feel helpless, if anyone has any ideas…please e-mail me at m.manzur@umiami.edu Thanks!
April 22nd, 2008 at 4:13 pm
Ya I totally just got banned from facebook for too many friend requests. It’s not my fault I’m uber popular. WTF. I emailed them, but I expect I’ll get no results.
April 26th, 2008 at 6:23 am
Ive been an active member of facebook for a long time, i dont have too many friends, im not a member of more than 30 groups, i message friends i cant see and leave messgaes on walls.
Apprently this is spamming…. I recieved a warning and im amazed and gutted!
Does anyone have an email address that i can contact them on please… seeing as they dont have a ‘contact us’ thing on the actual site…
April 29th, 2008 at 11:59 am
I joined, then got over, Facebook real quick. They need to learn from MySpace and go from there.
May 24th, 2008 at 12:57 am