(CC) Rob Cottingham
One of the first groups I joined on Facebook was “Petition to get Facebook to drop the “is” from status updates.” This was back in July, when I begrudgingly opened an account.
While my friends provide this corporate datamine Facebook with life, heart and mind, the service doesn’t really give a lot back. As a “social” space Facebook is still very inhuman - from the Walmart aesthetic to the lack of user controls. The fact that Facebook doesn’t even allow commenting in their developer “blog” is an example of just how far removed this space is from established philosophies of web2.0 social and participatory media - namely, participation and choice.
As an early user of online social networking services, my main problem with Facebook is the arrogant disregard for user needs. In this sense, the medium really IS the message. It’s a deeply bad precedent for social media and a model that should be actively challenged, not reinforced. If only we’d recognise our ability to step up and ask for that change.
If it has taken Facebook this long to address simple concerns like dropping the “is” from status updates (which is still, as of the date of this post, unchanged) how long will it take them to address the more critical issues involving greater granularity of metadata and privacy controls?
For example:
- Select all/unselect all boxes for status updates, posts and newsfeed. Unlike most email programs, you cannot currently select “all” if you wish to delete more than one item at a time. Why make it difficult for users to delete their data? I’ll let you think about that one for a moment. Not only are you unable to select more than one item at a time, but you’re not permitted to delete them - instead, Facebook generously offers to “hide” (”x”) the item. In essence, they’re saying - your data is ours. Once it’s in the vault, you no longer have any say. This is bad, bad, bad.
- Delete option for mini feed. Hide is not the same as delete. Again, why provide this option in some places and not others? There’s no technical reason for this given Facebook’s data capacity.
- Opt-in (not out) - especially for news feed. Presently, Facebook newsfeeds all of your activities — whether you wish to share those activities or not. Again, why are they doing this? And why haven’t we demanded that we have the option to delete those histories? Even Google allows users to pause the collection of internet browsing history and that’s a fine feature if you ask me (mine’s been paused since the summer and it’s going to stay that way).
- User-defined fields for politics (in particular). Currently, you get to choose from a questionably limited menu of American “politics” listed as a drop down. There is no technical reason why they cannot provide a user-specified field here as they have for religion and other categories. Orkut and other social networking services had this option from the very start - there’s no reason why Facebook shouldn’t offer it as well.
- Pre-selected default settings are developer friendly. Presently, default settings are defined according to the developers (not the users) interests to allow all. In order to modify settings according to your own preference, you have to manually DE-select pre-selected developer-friendly settings. For example, I just discovered that Facebook has added a new field to the default applications settings: “Allow this application to contact me by email.” I have had to go through each of my applications to manually deselect this setting.
“Dream” items:
- More granular relationship designators: This is the ability to define my contacts within a range of relationship designators - business contact, coworker, classmate, personal friend, acquaintance, family member, teammate, etc.
- Boundary settings: As in real life socialization, boundaries are necessary for healthy relationships. I’d like to be able to choose who gets access to what social network. For example, I currently use the “limited profile” with those I do not wish to pester (with status updates) or may not wish to share status update with. I’d like to have the option to keep my friends, family, internet-only contacts and professional associates separate from each other. This isn’t about whether I trust people, it’s about my personal boundaries and privacy. Facebook has already designed setting that could be modified to do the above (limited profile). So there’s no technological reason why they can’t provide this option.
Driving my continued engagement with Facebook and other corporate sns (good, bad and ugly), is a motivating utopia that it IS possible to create a social networking service that respects the user through transparent policy, genuine communication and user-friendly features and controls.
I believe the difference between a great social networking model and a bad one is not a matter of scale, technological sophistication or cost but guiding principles and practices. Providing users with non-critical controls is a good start. I know there are visionary developers out there who recognise this as an opportunity to create something people really want and need.
Hey Mel. Have you looked at what’s going on with Ning, or what Open Social may have in store? In general, I’m not fan of social network sites (at least as they currently exist). Myspace is obnoxious, slow, and terribly designed, facebook is feels like a social engineering network to manage free advertising, and I haven’t been to virb in months because it just didn’t seem to have any real community beyond bands.
But it seems to me that Open Social is designed to offer what you’re talking about, or at least make it possible to get your desired features more easily. Ning was one of the first places to sign on to Open Social. From what I understand, Ning is heading someplace where you could set up a site that speaks to all your other sites, and you can manage it as you wish. Sounds idyllic, but I’ll wait and see.
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Hey J,
Yeah, I like Ning and even created my very own social network (although I’m not entirely sure I want to use it just yet). My initial problem with Ning was the same as my problem with Facebook - not enough user controls. But they seem to be addressing that.
I haven’t done anything with Open Social because it’s more of a developer’s tool. I think you’re right that it will offer more of what I’m talking about. But yes, we’re going to have to wait and see.
Again, I think the issue here is a matter of principles, practices and guiding philosophies (mostly top down and corporate). The blogosphere emerged out of a lot of good ideas about participation and freedom of expression. This is not to say that we can’t have good corporate citizens taking part in all of this but that they need to understand the fundamental expectations of today’s users.
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Hey Mel
Very interesting points you make. I know you also experienced some security issues on FB initially, which you had to report in order to fix. One thing I notice about the site is that it is very unclear what your security settings are as you visit the site every day, whether you are searchable etc. A reminder every day that you are searchable until you switch off reminders might be an idea. I don’t mind for myself but as most FB users are like 13 years old it might be a good idea.
Anyway, what I find most sinister about the lack of control viz a viz predefined political settings is that FB places no such restriction on the religious description. You have to ask questions about why a social networking site would allow people to freely describe their religiosity - ie, the irrational fantastical urge in some - but not in the realistic sphere. I am sure it is because the powers that own FB do not want it to have 10 million people saying they are anarchist, communist, socialist, etc. Whereas millions who say they are christian is a recipe for a huge share price in the USA. Because I cannot put Marxist, anarchist, communist, socialist etc I choose not to put any descriptor at all. I dallied with not putting anything under religious views because atheism is not a religious view, but I wanted people to know. I am thinking of changing it to some like “Mine isn’t a religious view - it is a rational, human policical view: marxian atheist”.
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Hey Andrew,
Thank you very much for the comment (and so nice to see you around again!). I really appreciate what you’re saying here:
“Anyway, what I find most sinister about the lack of control viz a viz predefined political settings is that FB places no such restriction on the religious description.”
This is it precisely - this proves that there’s absolutely zero technological reason for the dropdown. And yes, I would agree that the word is sinister if they’re limiting user’s free expression of ideological identity. That should be deeply concerning to any thinking person.
One truly best practice for any forum that says it’s democratic and open is to - at the very least - permit differences of belief and creed. That’s part of our human rights code here in Canada. The use of the dropdown, with its highly questionable choices and purposefully limited fields, is discouraging of democratic expression. This is why so many of my non Facebook using friends refuse to create an account.
Some people I know have used the religion field to write their political view by adding a colon and then the religion. Another user used the field to write: Do not message me through facebook. And there’s another issue - the facebook inbox is not a genuine email. And does not have the kinds of controls you should have with an email program. It also requires to you stay logged in to Facebook if you wish to check messages from within the system - otherwise you have to aggregate your Facebook into your email, which is like opening up a door to all the Facebook developers.
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“The use of the dropdown, with its highly questionable choices and purposefully limited fields”
This is then a perfect reflection of western “democratic” societies: like Facebook, democracies like the US, Britain, Canada give a highly superficial democratic feeling but really are societies with “purposefully limited fields”: Canada has never elected a female prime minister or (like Britain) its head of state or upper house, America will never elect a poor president, Britain has a parliament that represents white male lawyers (and their business paymasters) and no one else. All the fields in our so called democracies are limited.
Similarly, these fields shift. Why allow religion to be an open field in Facebook and not politics? Why are some people exempt from the law and societal obligations (eg, the Kelwona Accord, the invasion of Iraq, any number of a hundred illegal acts the British government undertakes every day) and some of us are not exempt? The questions are related because these decisions seem arbitrary, but of course are made for a reason and not by us, whether it is the nefarious inclusion of your religion on Facebook (why not favourite color instead?) or the decision of a government to treat someone of a different skin color illegally. So you’re right: Facebook is a place where medium meets message - it is a social network like the wider world and works on the same principles.
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Melanie and all, very useful discussion here. I’m coming to the opinion that all the issues that we (and others) are raising re Facebook result, in part, from the relative inexperience of the designers, managers, and owners of these platforms. Now that I write that I know it’s terribly non-PC. But I find it tiresome to be waiting for all these folks to grow up, have enough life experience, and think about technology (at least a bit) before writing the code. But I’m not holding my breath. I’m sure my parents were just a frustrated with me and my generation and our grand ideas.
And on the humorous side, the subtitle of this post could be “It all depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is.”
-Bill A
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I think your granuality ideas are the key to FB (or more likely a clone) becoming a tool for grown-ups, Mel. Being able to group your contacts - especially secretly - will mean it can be used professionally. I would have killed for a tool when I worked on huge projects with 30 people on my side and 30 more on the client side, plus another 1500 people within my company, all of whom I could not realistically communicate in the way I (or they) wanted (and this was in a large IT solutions consultancy with big technology clients). Restricted project groups in a networking tool would be ideal.
Bill, I get your point about the inexperience of some of these developers and designers, but then again if people stopped to think about what they were doing we probably wouldn’t have Linux or the internet. I think to have the vision of wanting something FB to exist means you are aloowed a few mistakes. I do think that they need to think more about their social repsonsibiity as opposed to what works on a technical level. I don’t actually think that life experience has much to do with it. I have always found those with a long experience in business and development to generally have the most contstrained thinking patterns and problem solving methods and the newbies to be unfettered by bad thinking. It leads to mistakes, but also to innovation. (Sorry to use somethign so crass as a military history example but take Napoleon as a good example, who wiped the floor with the Austrian armies in the campaigns of 1796/97 at age of 26, without ever previously having been involved in a field battle, let alone been a general at one).
You say yu are not holding your breath but there is every reason to think that solutions do come quickly. Look at wikipeadia and its growth. The problem is not the inexperience of developers - Linux is a good example of what inexperienced people can achieve - but the injection of revenue streams and polictical agendas. FB wants to appeal to mass N. American markets so it has a political agenda of tight controls, a religious bias and crappy revenue midelling. If it loosens these up (or better still someone begins an open source FB idea which does not rely on advertising) then it will become a much better paradigm. Impossible? Wikipaedia has only 5 full time staff, but its technical solution and intelligence model work very successfully.
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