<story><title>Facebook is Hiding Your Mail</title><url>http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/12/facebook_s_other_messages_mail_you_are_probably_missing.html</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>citricsquid</author><text>THIS EXPLAINS EVERYTHING. God damnit Facebook.&lt;p&gt;So a couple of months back we did a give away, 100 people who like our Facebook page (for the Minecraft forum) get a free copy of Minecraft. After the competition &quot;closed&quot; I picked 100 winners and messaged them their copy, this is what, $2000 - $2500 value?&lt;p&gt;Less than 10% (edit: I checked my spreadsheet, 8 people) ever replied to me and this explains why. Because I can&apos;t message &lt;i&gt;from&lt;/i&gt; a fan page I messaged from my personal account... so most of these people don&apos;t know that they ever won (they weren&apos;t my friends) and probably never will. The message is there sitting waiting to be read...&lt;p&gt;sigh.</text></comment>
<story><title>Facebook is Hiding Your Mail</title><url>http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/12/facebook_s_other_messages_mail_you_are_probably_missing.html</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Kylekramer</author><text>Golden rule of spam filtering: a false positive is much, much worse than a false negative. Friends only messaging is a kind of Gordian Knot solution that is admirable in its boldness, but spam is a complex problem that requires a complex solution. Facebook shouldn&apos;t be taking the easy way out, especially as it becomes the de facto communication platform.&lt;p&gt;Just to add a personal data point, I had a very similar experience with the author of the piece. Lost my wallet recently, and lo and behold, I got a Facebook message I never saw till today. Yes, 99% of all the &quot;Other&quot; messages were spam, but this was probably the most important FB message I ever got. Lucky for me I also had an ID card in there that the finder was nice enough to extrapolate my work email address from, but Facebook needs to address this.</text></comment>