Facebook is getting stupider

I've long defended Facebook in terms of its privacy features, and had little sympathy for morons who post compromising photos to be found by their employers. (Hint: Don't join the network for your employer so your boss can see your profile, dumbass.) The utility of keeping in touch with people through Facebook has been nothing but awesome, particularly since I moved.

But I'm kind of stunned at the complete stupidity around the decisions they're making lately, and the total lack of QA. For example, I recently posted a comment reply on a mobile photo from my sister-in-law. When I went back, it was gone. At first I thought, wow, does she not like me? But then I went back to find that it was in fact there, but despite the proper time stamp, appeared after later comments. How does a bug that obvious get into production? Do they even have a QA process?

Then there's this ridiculous fucking need to categorize and cross-link the whole fucking universe. (One more "fucking" for good measure... thank you for your patience.) This stupid profile conversion really f'd up all kinds of people, when presented with a mess of check boxes to approve everything from your work experience to the music you liked. My first impression was, fuck you, Facebook, I don't need to link all this shit, I just want people to know where I worked and what I listen to. At no time was there a message that said, "Answer incorrectly, and we'll blow all this shit away." So I didn't check anything, and what do you know, my profile was essentially naked. On a whim, I back-buttoned and let it check everything, and found everything preserved, though with annoying links to pages that often have nothing to do with what I would like to. For my employer, Microsoft, it links to some kind of student recruitment page, for example. WTF?

When Facebook gets in the way of just wanting to share shit with my friends, it instantly loses huge amounts of utility. What Facebook is "offering" (read: giving it to you in a naughty way) does not align with the reasons people use it. I don't care what their critical mass is, this will in the long run come back to bite them in the ass. Internet users are too fickle.

As for their "Like button everywhere" strategy, I've been mulling that over in my head ever since they announced it. The struggle in my head, as someone who publishes content and facilitates a micro-community, is that I'm not entirely sure I want or need to let my visitors let Facebook know every little thing about what they do. My revenue model is three-fourths advertising, so it does me little good to have people drop by only when a "friend" decides they like something and that shows up in their feed. Perhaps that's short-sighted in the realm of every page view pays, but one of the ways you score higher CPM's is having repeat audiences that spend time on your site. I'm not saying I won't experiment with it, but I'm really, really skeptical.

Mark Zuckerberg gets on stage and tells everyone how this is good for the Internet, and good for Facebook users, but all I see is an arrogant prick who doesn't think things through. Then there are pundits dripping all over him with virtual inappropriate touching as the savior of the Internet. I'm still not buying it. Facebook's goal is to have everything you deem social route through them, and that feels dirty. I don't feel threatened by it in any way, in terms of the communities I run (they've only gotten bigger since the non-college launch of Facebook), I just find it disturbing that people are OK with it. As much as Facebook may allow you to be the gatekeeper to what you share, their lack of QA and constantly changing privacy schemes make me uncomfortable.

Maybe I'm just being a grouch, but Facebook scares me a little. And that makes me sad, because it has managed to enrich my life greatly over the last few years, reuniting me with countless people that I couldn't keep up with pre-Web. It would be quite a loss if that were to change.