Facebook More Hated Than Banks, Utilities

jfruhlinger writes "According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, Facebook raises a lot of ire among its customers — more than Bank of America or AT&T Mobility. This bodes ill for the company — as blogger Chris Nerney points out, many of the others on the most-hated list are utilities and other companies with monopolies, which can hold customers despite bad service. At least Facebook edged out MySpace." Unsurprisingly, the most important thing about Google+ is that it's not Facebook.

Comments

Never underestimate

[chemicaldave]

Never underestimate the ability of people to hate something that didn't exist a few years ago and they get for free.

Re:Never underestimate

[Sez Zero]

I don't pay money for Facebook, but it is certainly not free.

Re:Never underestimate

[timeOday]

I'm not even on Facebook and I hate it, because everybody stopped sending personal emails. Everything is getting too centralized.

Re:Never underestimate

[TheLink]

You're probably not Facebook's customer either.

You're what Facebook sells to their customers.

Re:Never underestimate

[antifoidulus]

See, there is a huge difference between AT&T et al. and Facebook, namely that with AT&T, you have to enter into a deal with them, they cannot just put you on their network without your consent. Now you may have gripes with the service you get after you get on their networks, but at the end of the day it is something you consented to. Facebook on the other hand has the potential to draw you into things you never consented to. For instance get tagged in a picture that you would rather not be tagged in? Tough shit, deal with it. The list goes on. So yeah, you can hate something you got for free, esp. when you didn't want it in the first place.

Re:Never underestimate

[Samantha Wright]

Some or all of your eternal soul. Also your... inalienable right to non-targeted advertising, I guess.

The privacy-drain of the internet has turned you into a husk of a human being unable to escape your own vices! You can do nothing but buy, buy, buy because all of the advertisements around you contain nothing but exactly what you want and/or need! You're nothing but a slave to your impulses now, controlled by your corporate masters! What has mankind done to the world of the future?

Frankly, I think services paid for by marketing research are probably on the losing end in the long run. Product placements can only get so subtle... and as they do, we're getting more adept at catching them and ignoring them. Viva la AdBlock.

Also, there's a chance that your mother's maiden name and/or credit card information could be leaked to someone unscrupulous in a developing country.

Re:Never underestimate

[Opportunist]

They have customers, but it's not their users. They're the product. Yes, dear user of Facebook, you're not their "valued customer". You are what they are selling. You are the product. You are a bit like the native Americans when the white people came. Ignorant of what this "trade" really means, what it really means that you hand over your private space for a few trinkets. Your data is valuable, but you hand it over for a few shiny beads.

But hey, don't feel bad. Facebook ain't the only one. It's about the same with private TV. You, watching it, aren't their customer. You're their product. They're selling you to the ad companies. So it's not like Facebook is the first "evil" company to exploit that people attach little value to their time and data, they just took it to a new level.

But it's still Google...

[eln]

It may not be Facebook, but it's still Google, and Google is still a company whose entire business model revolves around mining user data and using it to sell advertising. Google also shares Facebook's general disdain for privacy.

As long as we depend on single monolithic sites run by for-profit entities for social networking, we'll continue to have the same problems we do with Facebook. The whole social networking model is based around providing the service for free while making money from targeted advertising. As long as that's the case, the companies running the social networks will do whatever they can to try and entice people to reveal more information about themselves. Switching from Facebook to Google isn't going to change that.

Re:But it's still Google...

[evanbd]

It may still be monolithic, but it's at least possible to switch and take your data with you. Not perfect, but a huge improvement.

Dont use it then.

[drolli]

I always wonder about the people who hate something, and despite quite some competition, continue to use it. Do your friends really stop talking to you if you leave facebook? Then look for other friends.

WRONG - you are not Facebook's "customer"!

[MadCow42]

You are Facebook's PRODUCT... not their customer. Their customer is the advertisers. Their only motive is to not piss you off enough to go away.

Your data.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're paying by your personal data, which are then made available to FB's customers (e.g. advertisers). Also, FB can use anything you upload there as it sees fit ("irrevocable license blah blah blah"). Go read their ToS, you may be *slightly* surprised what you're giving them - it's certainly not free, not even as in beer.

Re:There's a difference...

[morethanapapercert]

On the other hand, if your mother opens an account with $BIGBANK, then that bank only has access to the personally identifying information she provides to them, there are some laws in place to control exactly what information the bank is allowed to ask for and exactly how they are supposed to handle it. That bank also would exactly ZERO information about you. By comparison, Facebook makes it incredibly easy to submit far more information than simply name, age and physical address, not only about the user in question, but many of his friends and family. Your mother could add your name to a genealogy app, combined with the fact that she publicly mentions that she has a inherited disease and now it's possible to discover that you are at risk for that same condition, even though you never even joined the site.

On top of that, the information a bank knows about you is, by default, private Your neighbour cannot get your banking information from $BIGBANK without a court order or a certified letter stating that he is now the executor of your estate. Facebook is, and always has been, by default as public as possible. By default, almost every app someone installs has access to all the information found in their profile and the profiles of their friends. Facebook makes it very easy for it's users to remain unaware that their privacy is subject to the decisions made by their friends.