Hey readers,
Facebook!
Conquerer of the internet, scourge of privacy and cause of
productivity issues worldwide... Sucks. Yes really it does – the
hypocrisy of this statement is not lost on me as no doubt if you
followed a link to this post it will no doubt have been via... my
Facebook.
Therein
lies the first of my problems, Facebook has practically overtaken any
other kind of connectivity, phone calls, texting, emails –
everything. To the point where, if you post something interesting for
someone's benefit and they don't immediately see it – you will
undoubtedly contact them via text or phone call, for them to check
their Facebook! Does anyone else see the fallacy in this? Are we so
desperate for social validation? Every time we go out pictures are
uploaded and tagged – evidence of our myriad antics there for the
masses. Oh sure there are many privacy settings, you can restrict who
sees what, but the sheer number of people that simply don't bother is
staggering. Is it exhibitionism? Vanity? A simple lack of concern?
Whatever it it is it's reckless, we as users have no rights to the
state of this data, once your account is on there, it's there forever
– active or not – a record of your life from whenever you signed
up till now is available to staff members of Facebook. There's
already been numerous scandals about data being passed along to third
parties without permission, the privacy policy has been examined and
criticised by a great number of people, yes concessions have been
made but is it enough? I'm sure that at a corporate level there will
be some safeguards in place to stop abuse of such unparalleled access
to personal information, but abuses will happen, it's inevitable, the
potential for damage on a personal level is unparalleled.
It's
about to get worse too, the new timeline layout starts at 'born' –
are Facebook going to implement a feature where you can date tag
photographs? Or backdate certain posts? Otherwise I really can't see
a point to the feature, but that means a permanent digital record of
your entire
existence, is anyone really willing to do that? I understand having a
private record for posterity but come on...
Which
brings me rather neatly to my next series of points, Facebook has for
years been somewhat notorious for format and design changes, often
quite radical ones without forewarning or options. Timeline is the
latest and by far the worst. Not only is it unavoidable, but it's
site wide – profile pages and product pages are now exactly the
same in terms of layout, which completely defeats the object of
having the two different kinds of page. Being set apart from profiles
was what always grabbed my attention, custom tabs – custom
design... I’ve been informed that many of those things no longer
exist. Additionally, a new advertising system seems to have come into
force with timeline – rather than quiet ads at the sidebar as with
traditional profiles, loud obnoxious ads interrupt news feeds, often
directly in your eye line. Some even 'talk' which for those of us
that run FB in a background tab (whilst watching TV and films sourced
completely legitimately in another...) is extremely annoying to say
the least. Why have Facebook done this? I can only guess but I’d
assume now the company has gone public, revenue streams have been
increased to keep stock prices up, but like most of this post –
that's only conjecture.
Customer
service has also been entirely lacking, whenever there have been
technical issues with chat, no explanation is given, whenever an
update is coming, no warning is given – locking of profiles is done
with minimal warning and explanation, and in the cases of this
happening wrongfully there's no live support option to deal with it.
Meaning that users are often left in the cold (so to speak)
potentially for weeks, or they have to make a new profile and
gradually recover all the friends they lost.
At
the end of the day what I’m getting at is that Facebook users have
been jerked around enough, and interrupting our ability to
communicate with awful design and unwanted ads (that will no doubt
eventually be removable by paying a fee.) For a website that gained
its initial popularity for its ease of use and clean design (compared
to its contemporaries) it sure has lost it's way.
Perhaps
then, it's time to move on?
Thanks
for reading
Wheelchairman2
No comments:
Post a Comment