Facebook & The Opt-Out

As I'm sure most of you know unless you've lived on the top of a mountain for the last several years that Facebook is the top of the social media pile. It is so popular that last year the game "Mafia Wars" on the site passed pornography as the number one internet activity. That's the first time that anything has ever passed porn.

So much of how we communicate is being changed by the site that when they make changes it affects us deeply as individuals and as a culture. The problem is not the changes but how we are asked to deal with them and the lack of notice about them.

Remember when we were automatically enrolled in their advertising program so that our names and faces would be used in ads for pages we "liked?" We had to opt out of that one to protect our privacy. That was just an example of how we, loyal Facebook users, are regarded by what is becoming an ever larger and faceless corporation.

The most recent affects all of us and how we communicate on Facebook. Recently, they made a change to the newsfeed that was far more sweeping than would it would first appear and no official notice was given. I noticed that I didn't see postings from several pages anymore nor did I see several of my friends. At first, I wrote it off as just missing them in the vast amounts of posts on my feed everyday. After a while, I began to get a little frustrated. I also noticed decreased traffic on the pages I administrated. This is very frustrating since this is one of the main ways to communicate en-masse to the fans of these pages. Listenership to my program fell off as well. The sudden drop didn't make sense.

Then it came to my attention that Facebook made a change to the newsfeed. Starting a few weeks ago, only people and pages you interact with show up on your feed. Unless you hit "like" or leave a comment on a post (or vice-versa for friends) within two weeks, the page or person disappears. I'm sure many of you are like me. I don't comment or even "like" postings on popular pages so I don't get the annoying notices every thirty seconds. I know I can shut them off but I want some notice on the pages I do interact with on a regular basis. There's not a lot of customizing on that option. The only way to fix this is to scroll down to the bottom of the feed and click "edit options." Once there, choose to allow all pages and friends.

I'm not against the option of selecting who you want on your wall. In fact, for some people, it's a great idea. However, it does have a chilling effect on business, public figure, and organizational pages and their ability to reach their fan base. The news wall is the most effective means most of us have to share event information since we are not able to invite fans to events directly. This is why traffic and listenership dropped off so suddenly. People who did not interact with the pages stopped seeing the postings and links. The current structure makes it almost impossible to reach out without paying for an advertisement.

Although the option does create challenges for me, I am still not opposed to it. My problem is that it should be an opt-in rather than out. Facebook made the choice for us to restrict our communication. My inner libertarian just screams at an unnecessary control on my personal liberty. That may be an exaggeration but not much of one. I am a strong believer in the ability to make choices within the constraints of morality and ethics. Facebook users should have the option to add the restriction not to remove it.

I wonder what the future holds. Facebook took over when it became obvious that they offered a superior service to MySpace. As that service declines on their with each of their so-called improvements, I wonder if there's another service waiting in the wings to take Facebook's place.