When Facebook added the Like/Unlike option alongside comments, many users asked for a "Dislike" option if they felt their friends were going over the top in terms of expressing a particular viewpoint.
Not a bad idea.
Not a bad idea.
Facebook, though, has ignored those requests and chosen, instead, to add a "Report" option, in the same vein as "flag@whitehouse.gov" for those "fishy" posts so that we can now report our friends anonymously. But who do we report them to? To our friend in the sky, Facebook.
The choices when reporting a friend's wrongdoings are "inappropriate content", "inappropriate or pornographic picture" or "attacks individual or group".
Think about it: if I choose my friends, what right does Facebook have to arbitrate amongst us friends? Are they the all-knowing Friend, choosing what is appropriate between myself and those I've chosen to keep in my circle of friends? It's not as if this content is available to everyone on the web; it's only available to friends I've chosen.
Maybe Facebook meant well, and I can certainly see their point on pornography. But we already have the option to limit what we see from feeds of friends who go over the top, and it works as intended, without the threat of banishment from Facebook.
On matters of politics, lifestyle, et al, for Facebook to suddenly become the arbiter amongst a group of friends makes Facebook the equivalent of the schoolyard monitor at recess; yes, they control the joint, but you really don't want them mucking up your free time before they drag you back into the classroom.
Facebook won't be able to effectively police the bullying, and the unintended side effect of the "Report" feature will be a chilling impact on those of us who might choose to have friends of different political or lifestyle persuasions, for fear one of those friends will "report" us and we'll lose our Facebook accounts.
Way to go, Facebook: you've now inadvertently segmented a growing community of eclectic friendships back into small camps of like-minded (whether narrow or broad) people.
Good points, Tim. I'm a hardcore progressive, but I've got a handful of friends who are libertarian or conservative, and whenever I post a comment or a link to an article/video that supports my views, I wonder "What will so-and-so think?" I post it anyway, but knowing I'm sharing thoughts and media with people who aren't like-minded actually encourages me to evaluate what I'm doing in a way that's different than I would if I knew it was only preaching to the choir.
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