It isn’t unusual for Facebook to change things around. In general, these changes tend to annoy users of Facebook for a while, and we all complain, and then eventually adjust to the new look. An example of this phenomena happened when Facebook changed everyone’s pages to the new Timeline format.
A rash of blogs hit the internet warning people that they really should go delete old photos, posts, and even comments that they put on Facebook several years ago, (and now would find embarrassing), before Timeline went into affect. The fear, I suppose, was that Timeline would make it a lot easier for people to scroll through your Facebook page and read and view things that you had long since forgotten about.
Recently, it appears that Facebook has started preventing some comments from being posted. A box pops up titled: “This Comment Can’t Be Posted”.
Why not? It is because the comment is considered to be “irrelevant or inappropriate” by the automated system that Facebook is using to prevent spam. Some people feel that this is a form of censorship. Others have gone to different social media websites, such as Google + to make comments about their comment being denied on Facebook.
Facebook recently updated its mobile Messenger app to include something else that might make some users feel uncomfortable. When you use the updated version of the app to send a message as part of a chat, it will automatically put a little mobile icon underneath your text. This will allow everyone who participated in the chat conversation to see exactly where you were at, “in real life”, when you posted that comment.
The same update is going to add a “read receipts” feature. After you participate in a chat conversation on Facebook, this feature will display who actually read what you wrote. It also will let you know if the chat message you sent to your friend through Facebook actually got to them. In other words, it will tell you if your Facebook friends are ignoring you, and it will make it clear when you are ignoring what your friend chats to you about on Facebook. Imagine the amount of additional Facebook drama this little feature will create!
I would think that companies that make social media websites would strive to make their lovely website as fun and comfortable as possible for people to use. Facebook could do a bit better at that. These new changes make me feel uncomfortable, and I suspect that I am not the only one who feels like these new features are creepy.
Image: Facebook Social Media by BigStock
