They're Facebook's customers. That's a simple one. Does this situation suck? You betcha, my own mother is going to be hit hard by this, but on the other hand Facebook doesn't owe you anything, it's their platform (which I have a large dislike for).
The problem is that any platform that a business could use to reach their customers where they hang-out will basically require a social network, a utility for the regular user to give them a reason to be there. Businesses marketing to them costs money everywhere else, so it makes sense that that would be the way of earning revenue the utility would target.
Basically, they may have gathered the likes, but the reason they can is because Facebook exists and makes itself useful for non-marketing reasons, for regular users. If a business wants to market to the users on there, then it makes sense they have to pay for it, in my opinion.
I think that this stunt will increase Facebook's profits in the short term, mainly because of businesses that have already invested in building their pages. Longer term, however, we'll definitely see a shift to direct email marketing.
Once you have someone's email, you own that relationship and there's no gatekeeper to charge you for every interaction. As business start realizing valuing of the direct relationship, Facebook will start taking a hit, and rightfully so.
How's that supposed to work? Frankly, Facebook is a business that doesn't have your small business' interests at heart. Never has, never will. We've shouted from the roof-tops to never build solely on a third-party platform, and now non-tech businesses are going to learn that lesson. But, this is Facebook; they're not a benevolent entity, and they don't owe you or your business squat. Saying they're "double-dipping" or are a "scam" is ludicrous.
Very few companies behave this way (offer something for free then turn around one day and charge for it--drug dealers come to mind as the only business that does this). Those companies that do treat their customers to bait and switch tactics usually don't stick around for long. FB rightly so has lost the trust of their business users, so I hope this turns out badly for FB as I don't want this behaviour to become the norm for business.
Also, somewhat off-topic but
> drug dealers come to mind as the only business that does this
Drug dealers don't even do that themselves (product is too expensive and it takes while to become an addict, and even then it's not guaranteed revenue)!
I agree with you that it isn't surprising because it seems to be in FB's DNA to perform bait and switch like tactics (privacy policies come to mind as well). I wonder if that DNA spreads to their business internals (e.g. treatment of staff, inter-departmental agreements, etc)
That's right, nothing prevents current small businesses to post a last one paid facebook post telling the followers : "Subscribe to our mailing list here to get the exclusive offers"
But the key problems could be :
1 - People prefer browsing on Facebook than on their email client
2 - As a small business owner, creating posts on Facebook is easy, whereas creating nice emails that looks good isn't as easy. Getting feedback on these offers (Facebook Likes+Comments vs. nothing) is also a main problem for email marketing
As we all know it is risky to pitch too much of your businesses future on someone elses platform, especially one in which you don't pay for and have no formal business arrangement.