It doesn’t seem too long ago when one of my previous bands Randall Flagg was banished from Myspace for some time. By doing our part as a band and promoting ourselves, we were “flagged” as SPAMMERS and had our profile deleted for a significant amount of time. This signified that when a band does some actual leg work to enhance their status, they must be admonished. Well, Myspace’s (and Facebook) hyprocrisy has come full circle now. It seems that all along, as I said 2 years ago, that these corporations want one thing. Exorbitant amounts of traffic, oceans of users and self-made emperors stroking and catering to the ego that pilots them and their haughty profiles, and revenue to generate the money. All this at any cost apparently. Now putting these subtler crimes of ”do as we say but don’t do anything that truly individualizes you or you will be marked as SPAM” aside for a moment, let’s focus now on the more apparent atrocious acts on their part. It turns out these social sites such as Myspace have been giving out personal information of their users. See the article here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20100521/tc_ynews/ynews_tc2189
For the sake of knowing what happened thereafter, we did fight back! We had a pretty immense petition and fans who backed us up, as well as legal representation. And even though initially Myspace denied that they deleted our profile of 4 years or that they could make any sense of what was going on or that our profile even existed, they were “able” to magically restore our profile after a month and a half down-time. After this personal experience Myspace has always infuriated me. Their ingratiating fork-tongue “smile” along with their greedy paws extended to shake your hand and welcome you into some empty promise of social happiness and achievement by joining their website. All along toting the lies that they are the platform for you dear reader to express yourself as an “individual”. And when you took the initiative to utilize this tool of what you thought was nourishment for thwarting yourself into higher status amongst fans of your art or music, they clamped down on you as a SPAMMER. But who turns out to be the biggest con of all?? Precisely the accusers. I myself even in using Myspace – as the momentum and presence of the majority of the world makes it impossible to not use it lest it’d be a personal harm and stupidity – I’ve always wanted their demise. I can only hope for it.
One last note: I’m not sure how many people know this but Myspace started as a SPAM company. It’s genealogy is that of SPAM!! Read Trent Lapinski’s perspectives on this. Pretty interesting stuff and all the more reason to take Myspace down:
http://web2.commongate.com/post/What_MySpace_Doesn_t_Want_You_To_Know
