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So, yeah, the new Facebook is here, and it’s causing quite a bit of hoopla. A number of groups have sprung up in protest of the new “News Feed” and “Mini-Feed” features now central to a user’s home page and profile, most noticeably the Students Against Facebook News Feed Official Petition, which as of this writing has amassed a whopping 400,000+ members. Note that this has occurred in about a day and a half, the length of time this feature has been live. To give you a little scope, the Largest Facebook Group Ever has about 840,000 members and has been around for as long as I can remember.

But why the fuss? Is this not the next logical step in a world (or at least a country) with a fetish for voyeurism? Argue all you want, but we are inundated with reality television, blogs, webcams, and of course the MySpace/Friendster/Facebook sort of services, all of which are highly voyeuristic. You’re getting your information out there, but also allowing others the satisfaction of knowing that information. Why shouldn’t your buddies know when you’ve altered your music preferences or written on someone else’s wall? We were practically there already with the “Recently Updated” sorting option in one’s Friends list; this new set of features simply makes visible what was before a sort of useful mystery.

I don’t deny that the first thing that popped into my head upon viewing the new features was, “Wow, this certainly does have a shitload of privacy-related baggage attached to it.” But so what? Nothing that wasn’t accessible before this change has been made available; after all, anyone could navigate to see what I’d written on a mutual friend’s wall in the previous iteration of Facebook. The only difference is that it’s now easier to find out about my actions on the site, actions whose consequences were public anyway. Big whoop.

Massive group petition or not, I think this hubbub will fade into the background soon enough. More than anything, I believe it is our internal resistance to change that is fueling this rebellion. Things were setup in a way we liked, and now that way has been tampered with. But, as with most things, it’s not a change that we will be unable to adapt to.

Posted on 09/06/06 at 5:55PM,