I'd say you can't blame the user for not seeing a hidden checkbox in the corner.
Same thing with advertises and their little asterisks in the bottom with unreadable letters. It's just a shame that this is pretty much the only business model that you see today in "social" games.
Never understood what is social about sharing a predefined message that you have harvested a crop.
> Never understood what is social about sharing a predefined message that you have harvested a crop.
Nothing. This is a misunderstanding of the history of the term. A "social game" is a game built on top of a social network site (authoritatively defined here: http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html ) that makes actual usage of the SNS mechanisms. Farmville was the genre-definer (social games fitting the definition pre-Zynga were not categorized as such), so it's not surprising that the term is basically bullshit.
In this case I can blame the user if what was described is true. While correct that the checkbox is off to the side, not really hidden, the problem surfaces when they get to the next screen. There they are supposedly offered an explanation of what's going with an option to say no that is all provided by Facebook, not Zynga. If at that point the person quickly clicks yes just because they want to get back to the game then I would say that's their fault.
If moving forward required clicking an okay with no other obvious out, then I would agree. But in this case they had two chances; the first with a not-so obvious opt-out while the second had the obvious opt-out.
I agree, but you can blame the users that then click on the spammy posts and install the promoted apps. They are the reason this is an "effective" technique for viral growth.
Same thing with advertises and their little asterisks in the bottom with unreadable letters. It's just a shame that this is pretty much the only business model that you see today in "social" games.
Never understood what is social about sharing a predefined message that you have harvested a crop.