Facebook Plans To Let Anybody Message You, If They’re Willing To Pay For It

In light of yesterday’s news that Facebook is going to test an annoying new idea for video ads, you might be wondering if there’s anywhere else for them to go in the “user annoyance” department.

Oh, you bet there is!

Facebook, clearly out to annoy their users as much as possible, has been testing a fun new filter option that would put all the spam from events and other stuff right back under your messages tab:

While Facebook messages from friends always hit your inbox, most messages from people you have no mutual friends with get sent to an “Other” folder — a folder most people never check. Under the new test, a person you’re not friends with could pay to reach your inbox, and Facebook says you’ll only receive one such paid message a week. … All messages between friends, and even in many cases between friends of friends, will still get delivered to your Inbox for free without a hitch.

It would cost you a dollar to send this. One… measly… dollar.

If this is true, and there’s no reason to believe it isn’t, it would basically mean any semblance of privacy would be thrown under the bus. It’s difficult to see how Facebook thinks this will end well, since it’ll take your insane ex all of five minutes to figure out that, hey, pay a dollar and you know, KNOW, your message will arrive.

We can’t think of any situations where that would end badly. EVER. This whole initative may explain why suddenly Facebook is very, very interested in ensuring you understand and can easily access your privacy controls.

Sarcasm aside, we will say that Facebook deserves congratulations. Between the Instagram terms of service debacle, those damn annoying video ads and this, they have managed to pull off a hat trick of coming up with three different ways to enrage their users in about a week.

Excellent job, Facebook. We applaud you, even as we look over at Google Plus and find that it looks pretty damn great right about now.

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