UT-Dallas Professor Adds 'Enemies' Feature To Facebook

An anonymous reader writes "Many people have called for a 'dislike' button on Facebook, but the service has not allowed it. A professor's app lets users add 'enemies,' in what he says is critique of the service's advertiser-friendly niceness. Will Zuckerberg let the app stand or ban it?"

Comments

BAN!

[aglider]

Amything that circumvents FB choices will be banned. Or integrated.
So, in the end, that app will die for sure.

Who cares? Most social media accounts are fake.

[Barbara, not Barbie]

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/foremski/the-hollow-emptiness-in-social-media-numbers-most-accounts-are-fake-or-empty/2175

itâ(TM)s easy to buy âoefriendsâ and âoefollowers,â by the thousands, and âoelikesâ by the tens of thousands, for a low fee. This can jumpstart a marketing campaign if it makes it onto a top trending list. Buying such services will also help contractors meet performance goals set by clients and trigger payments. It can be a lucrative arbitrage.

The result however, is considerable inflation in the numbers of users of all the major social networks and platforms.

The operators of the networks: Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc, must know who is real and who isnâ(TM)t. They have usage data that shows telltale signs of a fake account. They also know how much information a user has disclosed, and how many user profiles are empty.

Whatâ(TM)s not known is how they count the many types of users, how rigorous is their analysis? There is no transparency on the single most important pool of information for their commercial customers.

So really, who cares? Facebook users are narcissists, insecure, asocial, or bogus "marketing accounts".

Re:Who cares? Most social media accounts are fake.

[Technician]

In reality most of those accounts are ignored for the most part. Circles of family and friends tend to cull dormat deadwood from active use. I don't friend random strangers, but family and close friends.

Re:Who cares? Most social media accounts are fake.

[Barbara, not Barbie]

You're a rarity. Most people don't bother culling accounts - their innate insecurity, which led them to friend total strangers in the first place to bolster their sense of self-worth, prevents that.

This sort of behaviour leads to some funny results. One of my friends, as part of a study, was asked to contact - by phone - a bunch of people picked at random from a person's friends list for a marketing project. These were all people the person had said they knew because "I don't just friend anybody..." Not one of them knew the guy.

Facebook == lame.

Re:Social choices

[PPH]

I guess I just don't understand how people can let their lives be manipulated by people or things that they dislike. Or by people that they like for that matter.

I select what products I want based primarily on my own judgment. If I know someone and respect their opinion, I may give some weight to it in my choices. But that respect doesn't always correspond one to one with friendship. Some of my friends are lacking in their knowledge in certain areas. Likewise, some people I don't like do display some common sense.

The whole 'freinds have got to stick together and stand up against common enemies' is exploited far too much politically as well as in marketing.

Marketing opportunity

[Chemisor]

Dear user, did you know that your sworn enemy Frin44 really hates Farmville? Would you like to add him to your Farmville notification list?

Re:Marketing opportunity

[Nimey]

Paul Atriedes and Baron Harkonnen have declared kanly.

Re:A clear violation...

[Opportunist]

Was just thinking that. Disliking something doesn't fit into the doubleplusgood world where everyone is liked and everyone's a winner. See, mom, everyone likes what I do, I got $somerandomnumber people liking what I do!

Being able to dislike something would actually make people see just how many people really not only don't care about them but care enough about them to wish they would just die and leave a very shallow grave.

really just depends

[nimbius]

if the application suberts or negatively impacts the model of facebook, which is data mining for the purposes of targeted advertisement, it will be banned.

i predict the addition of a enemy feature will work to incense negative emotional responses to facebook that so far have been confined to things that can be relatively mitigated, for example its policies and terms of service. an "enemy" on your facebook will make you less likely to check facebook, or its related applications. users who previously had ignored intentionally obfuscated security settings may begin to pay more attention to them, thereby costing you advertising data. you may switch social networks for one without any enemies or abandon social networking alltogether for a more controlled and privatized relationship with your friends. the implications of "enemy" are pretty big.

Re:Dislike

[Opportunist]

At least here on /., you actually can. Well, at least occasionally, when you got modpoints. You're not forced to mod every crap up or, if you think it's prime grade bullcrap, can only leave it be. You can actually go and mod it down.

The net effect is that if I talk out of my ass constantly on FB, I will still think people agree with me and like me. Because from time to time, everyone, even the dimmest idiot in the world, is prone to saying something witty, useful or at least funny. Even if 99.9% of the time, whatever he rambles about would instantly be dismissed as idiot drivel.

What does that mean on FB? That you get the occasional "please die, dumbass" comment while, if just looking at your "likes", you'll see how there are still people who actually agree with you, giving you the general feel that what you say is valuable input. On here, if you're a complete idiot 99% of the time, you will be shown in no uncertain terms that you are.

That's basically why FB will never endorse such a dislike feature. Because they don't give half a shit about just how much of a dork you are as long as you're there, use it and hand them information. And, well, people don't tend to stay where they're constantly told that they're idiots.

Re:FBDislike?

[Barbara, not Barbie]

There's a dislike plugin already.

It's called "disable account" - but it doesn't really work. They'll keep sending you status updates via email, and tell you when someone shares stuff with you, even though you've disabled the account. I disabled mine monthas ago, after hardly using it for several years after I finally signed up.

It's one way for them to keep their user numbers artificially inflated.

Dumped twitter years ago - boring!

Thinking of dumping google+ as well - I check it every few days, but really, it's not all that interesting compared to the real world. Especially now that spring is here! (I know, it's heresy to even speak of that big blue room with the bright light in the sky that can burn your skin if you stay there too long, and the living green carpet, and creatures that look almost as real as the digital people and birds and squirrels we see every day, ... but still ... :-)

Re:Social choices

[Ihmhi]

I guess I just don't understand how people can let their lives be manipulated by people or things that they dislike. Or by people that they like for that matter.

Well, here's a good example. Governer Rick Perry's "Strong" video. It was homophobic and hateful in every way. 26,404 likes, 764,362 dislikes. If there were such a thing as god I'd say he has a healthy sense of irony as well.

This one video was Perry's last stand, his last chance at being a contender. He decided to go all out and appeal to the Christian bigotry vote.

It didn't exactly work.

Re:Who cares? Most social media accounts are fake.

[Omestes]

Facebook is not only an enabler, it's also become the instigator in many cases. If it were to disappear tomorrow, long-term, society would be better off.

If Facebook disappeared tomorrow, then something just like it would show up the next day. All social media (since newsgroups, at least) has been vocally dominated by people desperately seeking attention, and using it as a crutch for their own psychological problems. This pre-exists the internet, go to a typical trendy college bar. Go hang out with your obscenely outgoing co-worker... Go to your local shopping mall and listen to the screaming teenagers (which was the social media of my generation, ignoring IRC and BBSs for us nerds).

People said the same stuff your saying about AOL > Geocities/Angelfire > Livejournal > Myspace, and now Twitter. Yes, there are problems with them, but if mature people use them maturely, then these problems are mostly mitigated. The same can be said of things like alcohol, idiots will use them and degrade themselves, but some of us can enjoy a tasty glass of scotch after dinner and be fine. Do the idiots degrade the responsible ones? Only if the responsible ones can't ignore the idiots.