Things aren’t going well for Matt Kruse, the developer of the über-popular Social Fixer browser extension which gives users control over how their Facebook pages and news feeds appear to them. It works within the browser and doesn’t affect the experience of anyone on Facebook other than the user. With it, status updates can be tabbed, items can be filtered, and it allows hiding or blocking sponsored stories and other advertising that runs through the news feed.
The last we heard, about three weeks ago, Zuckerberg’s people had taken down Social Fixer‘s popular Facebook page, a place for users to testify for the app and seek help and for Mr. Kruse to make announcements about updates and so forth. FB was claiming it removed the page due to reports of spamming, but was offering no way for him to plead his case.
We’ve seen this crisis coming since the introduction of Vista, which should have been a shining moment for the company. After all, the operating system was nearly six years in the making. They botched it, releasing a much anticipated OS that was not only a resource hog but basically just didn’t work. Wow. This was just after the release of Zune, a “me too” iPod, and before the release of the Kin phones, which are so rare that they probably fetch a premium on eBay.
That Friday night, in the wee hours of Saturday morning actually, I upgraded 