The social network is not especially keen on consultation, preferring diktat and data collection on your every move
Status update: It is not your Facebook page; it’s Facebook’s. You will be a lot happier if you can remember this.
Once upon a time Facebook did not exist. There were forerunners but it was only with Facebook that everyone suddenly took full advantage of the chance to re-engage with people we’d spent the past decade forgetting; school friends with whom we never had that much in common; that couple we met on holiday but probably wouldn’t like if we invited them to dinner.
Facebook also announced plans to feature increasing amounts of your web activity. Apparently, this will put it at the centre of everything we do online and thus raise its earning potential. Soon it will automatically tell your friends what you are reading and which sites you are visiting. That’s fine, if you buzz between the FT and the London Review of Books, but is perhaps a less enticing thought if a chunk of your day is spent on Youporn – or worse still, the Mail Online. You can even discover you are watching a movie at the same time as Angelina Jolie, which is a thrill, I’m sure – though it falls some way short of an actual date. As with everything on Facebook, it will be possible to mitigate most of this. If you wish to restore your privacy you can adjust your settings in little more than the time it takes to assemble an Ikea bookcase.
But what really drives users’ anguish is the sense of betrayal that came from thinking they had a say in Facebook’s evolution. This delusion of ownership – or at least stakeholding – is heightened because Facebook, like so many modern businesses, dresses up its commercial decisions as being designed to put the users first. The anger is based on people’s failure to appreciate their position in the Facebook equation. Nobody wants to be told they are nothing more than the eyeballs for advertisers; that their personal life is just packaging. So instead, users have come to believe that Facebook is a borderless democracy. But the Democratic Republic of Facebook is not especially keen on consultation. It prefers diktat and data collection and constant exhortation to users to “share more”. It wants to know your every move; what you watch, who you talk to. You may wander freely within its borders – which are constantly expanding. You are free to say what you like. You are even free to leave but it would prefer you stay and, frankly, there aren’t many places to go.
Facebook’s users are not the customers; or stakeholders. We are the product, and as such, we should remember that the meat on sale in a supermarket does not get to decide how it is eaten. We still have some choice. We can leave, or narrow our base of friends to those we might actually choose to see. Or we can stay, but if we do, we need to know our place in the food chain. Status update: We are the livestock for Facebook’s online supermarket and we are being fattened up for consumption.
Once upon a time Facebook did not exist. There were forerunners but it was only with Facebook that everyone suddenly took full advantage of the chance to re-engage with people we’d spent the past decade forgetting; school friends with whom we never had that much in common; that couple we met on holiday but probably wouldn’t like if we invited them to dinner.
This fabulous new opportunity to stay in touch with people we didn’t care about very much came free of charge. Yes, free; this is important. Facebook took its payment in kind by using the data we gave it to make money selling adverts. As it tightened its grip on our lives, Facebook started changing its conditions to maximise its revenue. Each time, we complained because those Facebook weasels, were messing around with “our” site – for which we didn’t pay – in order to make money. The rotters; perhaps we should have sided with the Winklevosses, after all.
FT readers know there is no such thing as a free lunch. Well, Facebook was the free lunch that had the temerity to change the menu. Last week it did it again, to the usual bellyaching. Over the weekend your news feed may also have been littered with a generic message recirculated by friends that began “Do me a favour...” and set out instructions that would restore some privacy to their bleatings. The instructions didn’t seem that complex but on the other hand it also looked like a lot of hassle. This is the kind of inertia upon which Facebook relies when making changes.But what really drives users’ anguish is the sense of betrayal that came from thinking they had a say in Facebook’s evolution. This delusion of ownership – or at least stakeholding – is heightened because Facebook, like so many modern businesses, dresses up its commercial decisions as being designed to put the users first. The anger is based on people’s failure to appreciate their position in the Facebook equation. Nobody wants to be told they are nothing more than the eyeballs for advertisers; that their personal life is just packaging. So instead, users have come to believe that Facebook is a borderless democracy. But the Democratic Republic of Facebook is not especially keen on consultation. It prefers diktat and data collection and constant exhortation to users to “share more”. It wants to know your every move; what you watch, who you talk to. You may wander freely within its borders – which are constantly expanding. You are free to say what you like. You are even free to leave but it would prefer you stay and, frankly, there aren’t many places to go.
Facebook’s users are not the customers; or stakeholders. We are the product, and as such, we should remember that the meat on sale in a supermarket does not get to decide how it is eaten. We still have some choice. We can leave, or narrow our base of friends to those we might actually choose to see. Or we can stay, but if we do, we need to know our place in the food chain. Status update: We are the livestock for Facebook’s online supermarket and we are being fattened up for consumption.
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