Hey, here's something really stupid and annoying: Facebook abruptly switched everyone's default email address to the @facebook.com account you've never used. [...] If you go to your profile (or anyone else's), you'll see the @facebook.com email account listed -- which just forwards to your Facebook messages inbox -- and none of your others. They've all been hidden in a ham-handed attempt to make the Facebook inbox relevant.
Apparently Google Plus also changed something in the last week or so. I started getting mail telling me that people were "sharing" things with me, but apparently their definition of "sharing" is, "someone you don't know added you to a 'circle' so we're going to mail you several times a day telling you that they made a public post."
Thus continuing my longstanding tradition of only ever logging in to Google Plus when I need to play whack-a-mole and un-check another new checkbox to get them to stop mailing me.
I'm sure every time I do that, they count me as an "active user".
Interestingly my real "default" e-mail address is still marked as "default" on my FB settings. But sure enough on my timeline settings only the FB address was visible.
So it seems that it's not a matter of them just changing everyones defaults but rather adding this to timeline and ignoring the default and using the FB address as a default instead.
So the title of the article is a little misleading since my default address is still my default address - but it's still pretty irritating that FB would choose to ignore their users default settings like that. Though I also suspect that it's been like that since they rolled out timeline and people just haven't noticed...but maybe it is something brand new that I hadn't noticed until now.
So now "default email address" means something completely different from "the email address shown to people by default."
"You keep using that word..."
Gizmodo article now updated with how to fix it:
http://gizmodo.com/5921085/facebook-just-changed-your-email-without-asking++heres-how-to-fix-it
Is Facebook a friendly?
I can't wait until email sent to the @facebook addresses starts getting interstitial HTML ads.
Also see:
http://lifehacker.com/5921095/facebook-just-changed-your-email-without-permission-heres-how-to-get-it-back
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/06/25/facebooks-lame-attempt-to-force-its-email-service-on-you/
Facebook is also helping various other sites pump up their bullshit "active user" numbers.
All those annoying "Your friend watched this video" wall posts generate more users for the sites because they force people to sign up to watch, who then spread the virus that is Facebook apps even further when that app posts everything they watched or liked.
I wonder when this will all blow up in their face.
Click "your friend watched this" link.
Get asked to sign up to "YouTube clone #25471".
Close window.
Problem solved!
44% of people seem to be clicking and signing up, handing over a surprising amount of personal info. I weep for the future.
A completely pointless endeavor, as well as why it may well be a spammer’s dream come true.
Hey, at least these days the 'unsubscribe' links don't lead to a 404 error, so that's progress.
(I've said before and I'll say again: my only regret about quitting google when I did was that I did it a smidge too early to officially cite the Plusterfuck as my reason for doing so in my exit interview.)
i'm sure this is for my protection somehow. it is important to trust the process. facebook has not let us down yet.
Yeah, I didn't like VHS either.