ASCII by Jason Scott

Jason Scott's Weblog

FaceLift (A Single Image) —

I don’t normally post “up to the minute” entries, but what the heck. Today, Facebook announced it was changing up, completely, how you interact with Facebook, including a whole range of profile adjustments, retrieval of random items from the past, and a whole new range of “partners” who will be shoving items into Facebook (and, ostensibly, taking a lot more customer data out).  One such partner is the social media weblog Mashable, which wrote a jaw-to-floor lauding of the new Facebook  as changing the face of social media. It’s something when such craven, transparent logrolling is considered standard operating procedure.

I have no interest in writing more than I did in FaceFacts, except that I was browsing the Facebook weblog and saw this single, enlightening snapshot of conversation below it:

Kaitlin works the registers at a Legoland. Jonathan is director of business development at a spanish-language “hot deals” site that has an application on Facebook that gives you the latest bargains and fills your timeline with offers throughout the day.

Kaitlin is unhappy. Jonathan is delighted. Kaitlin feels unease and discontent at what is happening. Jonathan tells her to change or die.

I suppose I could go on, but it would be redundant.

Enjoy your future.


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9 Comments

  1. Aaron says:

    Not my future. It’s just the one I’m going to be stuck living in.

  2. eddie says:

    I would have thought that the infestation of your privacy by this reverse Orwellian nightmare would be enough to scare people off FarceBook. But it wasn’t.

    It appears a UI / Functionality change might be the first critical hit on this abomination.

    Here’s hoping, at least.

  3. @cleversimon says:

    Jonathan also appears to be high as balls.

    “Change is not change. There’s, like, no such thing as the ‘present’, man. Have you ever *really* looked at your News Feed?”

    (Your post in May was the last straw in convincing me to cancel my FB account, btw. Don’t think I ever said thanks for that.)

  4. […] Scott found a Facebook exchange that neatly encapsulates the pros and cons of the latest round of changes to the way Facebook […]

  5. Jürgen says:

    While it’s obvious that continuously changing web sites, operating systems, browsers and so on challenge (ok, let’s be honest: annoy) casual users more than power users, I can’t get one thought about this out of my head: A few years ago, on Usenet, basically everyone was treated not-too-nicely. New users were told what was expected in the ecosystem, in no uncertain terms. Often, you read how badly other newbies that made a mistake were treated.

    But, at least in the German part of usenet, this worked — discussions were helpful, users were technically savvy (knowing obscure things about character encodings for Umlauts, broken Euro signs and so on) and no one broke the system (much). I feel that, while unpleasant, sometimes people need such pushes as Jonathan delivers here, to be forced to learn, adapt and continue as more informed users. I am grateful, in a strange way, to people who told me or other new users to “shut the door on your way out (of this newsgroup)”, because that was a harsh, but rapid and effective way to learn.

    And no, that’s no good thing per se, but computers will never be usable without some thinking and adaption, so I fear there will always be a need for some pushing.

  6. nox says:

    Honestly I hate the new web-social thing and even more the irreversible-no-optout-for-user changes that come with it. What’s this thing about my “most important” updates showing up first on FB? How the hell do they know what I find most important? It’s pure bullshit to not make users think but rather deceive them into thinking FB has any fucking idea what’s most important.

    I think for me, even worse than the fear of the “cloud” going down and everyone losing all their data is this constant change that is occurring. It doesn’t just happen in online services but also on browsers. Both Chrome and Firefox have now changed things with NO OPTION to go back to older features, and if one doesn’t update one loses the newer html/css/js features and improvements. The same thing happens of Facebook, various Google sites and probably every other site.

    Tying in with the above is the way everything is becoming homogenised in the sense that shows, bands, movies and other people are all moving their main site to Facebook or other services, locking us all in. And we all have to use real names of course (WHY NOT RIGHT?) Whatever happened to the old web? The sense of community is diminishing, something is way less personal or whatever word suits best. Couple that with every APP in the world going ‘web’ and Chrome releasing netbooks with no local storage, Sirs, it’s a big 2.0 clusterfuck. The way everything feels like it’s moving towards a milked down monetized distribution system for the big guys is pissing me off.

  7. Jeremiah Miller says:

    Just another round of people happy for any excuse to sell crap to other people sick of being sold to.

  8. Chris says:

    Speaking as a dialup BBS and Usenet veteran in my mid 40s, I just never had any desire to “get on” Facebook, or any of it’s competitors/predecessors. Maybe I’m just too old now ..