Fourteen years ago, when a nerdy Harvard undergrad decided to invent a webpage where he could rate girls in his class by how hot or ugly they were, the internet was a vastly different place. Mark Zuckerberg, in all his infinite teenage wisdom, could never have imagined that his little project would end up attracting one billion users on a daily basis. That governments would debate the ramifications of that use. That your mum would comment under every single one of your group photos saying “Lovely! Who’s this??? Stay safe! xx”
And how could he have imagined it? Facebook has changed irrevocably since its inception, and is still changing all the time. Here’s how it changed this week:
The UK government wants Mark Zuckerberg to stop leaving them on read
You would think, wouldn’t you, that with Windrush and Brexit and Amber Rudd, that Parliament have enough to worry about. But because we now live in a post-tech dystopia, yesterday the British government threatened to issue the Facebook founder with a summons if he kept ignoring them.
A letter featured the veiled warning: “We hope that he will respond positively to our request, but if not the Committee will resolve to issue a formal summons for him to appear when he is next in the UK.”
Which is basically a very polite, very British way of articulating the complaint we’ve all had at one point or another: “why are you ignoring me mate I can see you’re online stop it”.
Oh, and Mark Zuckerberg has developed his own version of Tinder
On Tuesday, at the website’s annual developer conference, F8, Zuckerberg announced a new feature, Facebook Dating. While Facebook Dating might bear a resemblance to other dating apps like Tinder or Bumble, the site claims that it will be different in that it aims at building long-term relationships, while simulating the way people meet in real life.
Set to be community focused, will allow you you to set up a new dating profile that can be separate from your “normal” Facebook. Messaging will also be separate on Facebook Dating, and most importantly, communication will be restricted to text, so you won’t be able to send links or photos when chatting for the first time.
Given the wealth of experience we have gathered from using Tinder, Bumble, Grindr, Happn, Hinge, Thrinder and every other dating app ever invented, we can be sure of one thing: some people will use them to send unsolicited pictures of their junk. So if Facebook Dating banning photos can stop this, then it can only be a good thing. Baby steps, after all.
It’s not all bad; they’re at least gonna give you the option of stopping Facebook from collecting your data
Yesterday, Zuckerberg also announced a new privacy control setting called Clear History, which gives users a simple way to clear their cookies – just like the one currently used in web browsers. This means that Facebook users could decide whether or not to show their browsing habits to websites and apps that use the site’s analytics tools to recommend content to you.
“One thing I learned from my experience testifying in Congress is that I didn’t have clear enough answers to some of the questions about data”, the CEO wrote in a statement (on Facebook, obv). “We’re working to make sure these controls are clear, and we will have more to come soon.”
Okay, but what does all of this mean exactly?
Basically, it means that Facebook is not just a website. It’s a freaky, ever-changing, perpetually-expanding life force. Cut off one of its heads and it’ll grow two in the same place. There is no escaping Facebook in its far-reaching, 2018 form. So we just have to shut up, put up, and keep liking those cute dog videos on our feed.
Or, you know, maybe just delete our accounts forever.
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