A very important boardmember like myself should never have to log into their instant messenger and find stuff added to their contact list without their permission. However, that’s exactly what happened this morning as AOL decided, in its infinite wisdom, to add two contacts to the buddy list of every single user this morning. They’re some of AOL’s “bots” which let you send questions to an automated attendant who responds back for you.
The problem is nobody agreed to let AOL add these users, if they were added by AOL, it means they weren’t on your buddy list already, and the only “out” they give you is a notice that basically says, “Oh sure, we added a few buddies because, well heck, we’re AOL. But if you really want to, you can delete these buddies without consequence.”
If that’s the only out they give, that it’s easy enough to undo what they had no right to do to begin with, then they deserve some heat for it. Whether or not your software is provided for free is irrelevant. I have to look at ads when I use AIM just like everyone else (although, truthfully, I use Trillian because I’m cool like that), so why should I have you ramming your services (MovieFone and AOL Shopping) down my throat?
Things must not be well down there in Virginia if they’re trying to hook you into their services that surreptitiously.
Technorati Tags: AOL, bots, AIM, Trillian, MovieFone, AOL Shopping
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Not like this AOL!
Today when I started up my instant messaging services (I use Trillian to access Yahoo, AIM, MSN, GoogleTalk, and ICQ) a message screen popped up. AOL had added two Bots to my buddy-list, MovieFone and ShoppingBuddy. So I could…
A good occasion to consider a switch to open instant messasing infrastructures like jabber/xmpp? There should already be enough trustworthy free jabber providers out there. This should be a good starting point.
Aside from my initial shock and disgust over this when saw my own contact list notification, I thought perhaps it would be handy to have the moviefone bot. Not having to go to the website to see what’s playing locally would be quite handy indeed. However, that’s not the case. You have to go through hoops to find out that you must type “4 whateverzipcode” to get local listings then the function to see showtimes doesn’t work at all.
It would be great, if anyone I knew actually used Jabber. Truth is, most people still use AIM for the IM needs, and it’s a hard habit to break; especially when you have to all be on the same client.
Jabber’s great, but the truth is no one uses it (no one being relative to the sheer volume of users on other services).
I think that’s the whole idea Chelle. You’re 100% right, it sucks. And of course the bot is really just a tie in to get you to head over to their site where you can watch 300 flash ads as you wait 20 minutes for your local schedule to load.
Yech. Keep it.