Make up a foreign ID. They can't know how it all should look like, let alone that they can verify the validity.

You can do just fine on Facebook. You can easily register an account as "Silence Dogood". You can post your rant on your page, and share the post on various groups (many of which are open access). It may even work better (be safer for you personally) than a random public square, as there's less chance for being arrested for stirring up trouble, in case you're proclaiming hate against certain people or so, and people don't get to see your face with it.

Sure the account may get blocked later, but what'd you care? The message is out already, and that's what it's about. Messages older than a few days are effectively expired on Facebook - not many people browse that far back in their news feed. Too many other messages appearing.

I have seen so many names that are totally unlikely to be real.

How about names like "Mercy Grace Cee Ogoy" (used to be Gray Cee Riggs until half year or so ago - name of the account changed, also an indicator of pseudonym use) or "FragiLe HEart" (capitalisation as used on Facebook).

Facebook doesn't seem to really care.

They did the job well. You couldn't even get down to 1 and you were terminated already.

I'm running a business.

I've used Google AdWords before (when it was affordable - 8-10 years ago I paid $0.10-0.20 per click where maybe one in 100 got me a sale, but a sale was worth about $400 to me, and would often result in repeat business). It was worth it, got me quite some business. A good investment.

Now I'm running a tourism business, and clicks will cost me $1.00-2.00 each - offer lower and I'm not even listed on the tenth page of search results. Maybe 1 in 100 gets me a sale, and a sale is worth about $10-20 each, with little chance of repeat business, that's the nature of tourism. Google AdWords is not worthwhile for me.

I have before found Google to be a great platform for targeted advertising. Based on the search words people put in they target ads quite well - I'm using their ads as well when searching for commercial offerings of something. Unfortunately they have become too expensive for me, small time operator. I have to do with SEO and trying to get more hits from search results, which appears to do the job quite well.

Facebook I am still using, but what most irritates me is that I have nearly 3,000 likes on my page, but when I post something after a few days I have a reach of 100-300 people (according to Facebook). And I get 10-20 likes on my posts - typically 5-10% of the reach gives me a like. That's very high, and more likes and other interactions should get a post to be distributed much further - that's at least what Facebook tells me. Obviously something is not right here.

I tried to pay for more exposure, with limited success. I'm targeting the English speaking population of Hong Kong, but half of that is domestic helper (i.e. has no money to spend), and those are highly over-represented on Facebook to boot. I think I got about my money worth back in sales. Not a too good investment. It did get me quite some exposure but imho the price is too high. I've stopped paying anything to Facebook, especially as they don't even distribute my messages to the people that already told Facebook they want to see it: i.e. everyone that "likes" my page.

Now I use Facebook just to enhance word-of-mouth. After events I post my photos, so people may share it with their friends. I share my event announcements in relevant groups on Facebook, and get quite some exposure that way. I'm not paying them anything any more, it's not worth it. Facebook could be the ultimate platform for targeted advertising, considering how much they know about their users, but they utterly fail in that respect.

I'm perfectly happy to pay for advertising, but only if it delivers. Now I have my product listed on various web sites, which resell tickets to my events, taking their cut of the price when they make a sale. No sale, no cost for me. As an added bonus, those services actually do deliver.

You just broke the quite important doctrine of first sale.

The seller gets paid and gets to say who it's sold to when he makes the sale, and only at that time. After the sale, seller has no say in what happens to/with the product.

I have a similar sentiment as you: e-books are fine for "disposable" books. Books, mostly fiction but maybe also non-fiction (depending on which category you like to put those popular "self-management" and "self-improvement" books) that are read once, maybe twice, then put away to never leave the shelf again.

Those books are exactly what I would never buy, but borrow from the library. This would then logically also the kind of books people like to borrow rather than buy. Continuing this line of thought, with the increase of borrowing services such as Amazon's offering more and more people will borrow e-books rather than actually buying them.

With e-books being mostly in the disposable or borrow-category, this idea indeed does not bode well for e-book sales. It may very well be that in the future most books that are read are e-books (I assume most people read books for entertainment, so mostly the disposable category), while most books that are actually sold are paper books (which act as reference material). Myself I barely read books, but I do occasionally buy books on specific subjects that are of interest and that I'm sure I will look back at time and again.

I'm selling stuff over the Internet myself, and give as payment options local bank transfer, credit card and PayPal. Credit cards go via PayPal: customers don't have to give me their credit card details (I never see this, I don't want to see it even as then I have to add all kinds of extra security measures). Works great.

First you claim Amazon shouldn't get in the way, should be out of the picture, and that there's no sense in having Amazon buy e-books from the author and then resell them. Then at the end of your message you say Amazon should be "just a traditional retailer".

Now this reselling is exactly what traditional retailers do, so here you contradict yourself. That Amazon happens to be in the digital sphere doesn't change the argument. Why should one have to go to the author directly for an e-book but not for a traditional book? Maybe this is because going to a retail store is convenient. All books in one place, nicely displayed and ordered by genre. You go there to browse books, see stuff from authors you didn't know yet, and finally make your choice and buy a book or two (or none).

Amazon and other e-retailers do the exact same thing. They collect a large number of titles and put them on display. They help readers to find new, interesting books. This adds a lot of value for both the author (who can sell more) and the reader (who has more choice). It's just fair that Amazon takes their share of the proceeds, a share that overall seems very reasonable to me considering what they do for the authors.

Maybe it's about time for you guys to consider alternatives to Windows? It sounds like it's not exactly the right tool for the job.

Some are on contract, many not, and are free to switch. Contracts last no more than two years after which you're free to switch, or keep what you have on a month to month basis.

Quality and usage patterns are of course hard to predict, but you can always switch to other plans if your needs change. Very easy.

Well, in my locality, the second is true for sure, as is proven by how often people switch to other providers. I've done it myself four or five times over the past 12, 13 years, and am considering another switch.

With customers all the time hunting for the best deals, the networks are forced to keep their cost down and quality up. So I suppose the first is true as well.

Probably not every single customer is doing this, but as long as enough do it, it keeps prices down for all of us.

As long as the shareholders also think $100M is small change and don't care about the lost profit/dividents, nothing is going to change indeed. The fine should indeed be far higher than the profits made thanks to the false advertising - however without in-depth knowledge of the company at stake you nor me can say anything sensible about whether this fine is reasonable or not.

I hope for you that'd be in Canadian dollars not US dollars or you'd really be fleeced!

I may assume they stopped offering these unlimited plans.

Here in Hong Kong mobile companies were also offering "unlimited", and in the beginning these plans were unlimited. Then iPhone came, and data use skyrocketed: fair use policies were used to throttle heavy users, later limits after which accounts were throttled came in place. The data amount was still "unlimited" as in no extra charges for more use but the speeds were lowered. Probably a similar argument was used by AT&T as they also didn't fully cut off customers, they just slowed the speed.

This got so bad that the government stepped in and updated the advertising code: unlimited must mean totally unlimited data without speed restrictions, or limits must be clearly mentioned in advertising.

Nowadays there is no unlimited data, unlimited speed plan any more: there are various 4G data plans with 1-10G a month and either throttling or overcharges after that. Or you take a cheaper plan (not as cheap as it used to be, I pay nearly USD 13 a month already for unlimited data and some 1200 minutes calling) for unlimited data and tethering allowed but limited speed (384 kb - a "4G lite" account they call it - more than good enough for things like simple browsing, whatsapp and e-mail).