Facebook Testing $100 Fee To Mail Mark Zuckerberg

iComp writes with a story about how it will cost you $100 to message Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook. "Got something you'd like to say to Mark Zuckerberg? The Facebook CEO still maintains a profile on the social networking site he founded, but beginning on Friday, sending him a personal message could cost you. Mashable was the first to notice that some users who weren't otherwise on the Behoodied One's Friends list were being asked to pony up before they could send a message to his Inbox, to the tune of $100 a pop. As El Reg reported in December, Facebook has been conducting a limited test of a feature that requires users to pay a fee to send messages to people with whom they have no direct connection. The idea is that the type of users who like to send spam, hate speech, and otherwise frivolous messages typically aren't willing to pay for the privilege. Impose a fee – however small – and they probably won't bother."

Laugh

[koan]

I'll pay $1000 to slap him silly.

Re:Laugh

[Anonymous Coward]

How much to shit in his mouth?

I have a scheme testing $0.43 fee to mail Zuckerb.

[fotoguzzi]

I figure my scheme will lose $15.9 B a year, but I think people might go for it.

I'll bet...

[jones_supa]

Hahaha. Facebook really is desperate.

I'm pretty sure that if you had something really important (a major business deal for example), it will still reach the main man just fine using [e-mail] .

Re:Laugh

[Joce640k]

This sounds like a great way to make sure only the real lunatics email him. Filter out all the people with only a low/medium hatred.

Great business policy

[Jetra]

I think it's to reduce the complaints for how crappy his service is.

Re:Laugh

[santax]

With a large trout I am going to assume?

spellcheck

[Frankie70]

After all that 100$ dosent even garantie you reply from him...

No. But they throw in a free spell check.

Obligatory form

[KPU]

your post advocates a

( ) technical ( ) legislative (x) market-based ( ) vigilante

approach to fighting spam. your idea will not work. here is why it won't work. (one or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)

( ) spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
(x) mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) no one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) it is defenseless against brute force attacks
(x) it will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(x) users of email will not put up with it
( ) microsoft will not put up with it
( ) the police will not put up with it
( ) requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
(x) many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

specifically, your plan fails to account for

( ) laws expressly prohibiting it
(x) lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) open relays in foreign countries
( ) ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(x) asshats
( ) jurisdictional problems
(x) unpopularity of weird new taxes
(x) public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
(x) huge existing software investment in smtp
(x) susceptibility of protocols other than smtp to attack
(x) willingness of users to install os patches received by email
( ) armies of worm riddled broadband-connected windows boxes
( ) eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
(x) extreme profitability of spam
( ) joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) technically illiterate politicians
( ) extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
(x) outlook

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

(x) ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
( ) any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) smtp headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) blacklists suck
( ) whitelists suck
( ) we should be able to talk about viagra without being censored
(x) countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
(x) sending email should be free
(x) why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
(x) i don't want the government reading my email
(x) killing them that way is not slow and painful enough

furthermore, this is what i think about you:

( ) sorry dude, but i don't think it would work.
( ) this is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
(x) nice try, assh0le! i'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!