John VanPelt would seem to be the ideal Facebooker.
He never rejects a friend request. He posts pithy comments on friends' walls — constantly.
As a middle-school teacher with former students as Facebook friends, the Lee's Summit man swears he never cusses online.
"I honestly thought I was being nice to people," he said.
But within weeks after VanPelt developed a slight addiction to the social networking site, the ubiquitous "Facebook Team" informed him he was blocked from posting or sending messages for an indeterminate amount of time.
Despite sending repeated e-mail appeals to Facebook, all he received was a generic response. "Facebook has limits in place to prevent behavior that others may find annoying or abusive."
Ouch.
"That was really offensive to me. I might be an annoyance?" VanPelt said. "What business tells you that?"
Answer: Facebook. But why?
Facebook did not respond to repeated inquiries, but a spokesman was quoted last year as saying that security issues were the reason.
Outside experts sum it up in one word: Spam.
Amid the war to block those cyber-tyrants who feed off Facebook's growing popularity, the Facebook gods block innocents who act like spammers.
Because spammers send many messages, post on many walls and do it quickly, the irony is that some Facebook users are punished for being too social on a social networking site.
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