Something with the most recent Facebook redesign does not sit well with me. Aside from the Twitter-ification of the main page and the somewhat slapdash approach to organization, there was one new feature that I do not like; or rather a lack of a feature. It relates to the new “I like this” option on each feed item. I take no exception to the cute and benign little widget; in fact, I appreciate its simplicity. It is an ingenious way of showing your friends that you are paying attention and it bolsters the positive feedback that drives the site. It is the lack of a negative counterpart that gets to me. There is no “I dislike this.” Why? Certainly if we like something, we must certainly dislike other things. If our friend announces he is moving to Pennsylvania, is it not legitimate to say “I dislike this?” If our cousin is sick, can we not express our empathy?
This lack of a negative option is indicative of a large assumption made by the designers present since the site’s inception. On Facebook, all of the negative aspects of real-life are either ignored or, when that is impossible, shrouded in ambiguity. For example, “Frank is now listed as in a relationship” for the uninitiated is a vague declaration of commitment, possibly with someone who is not on Facebook. In reality it means that Frank’s longtime girlfriend, Suzy, has decided the relationship is off and that they are no longer together. Poor Frank, who is probably out playing pool with his friends when all of this occurred, returns home after a few too many to find, not only that his relationship is over, but that Facebook has quietly swept this fact under the carpet.
The site has good reason to keep everything positive and uplifting. It’s no coincidence that MySpace, Facebook’s main competitor, has been the center of a lot of high-profile cyber-bullying. Its unpoliced, anything-goes atmosphere leads to chaos, fed by hormonal adolescents who publish vituperation in glittery letters. Compared to Facebook, MySpace is the Wild West, or more aptly, an unsupervised high-school cafeteria.
From the beginning, Facebook has attempted to distance itself from the MySpace madness, to rise above the fray. This was easy the early years when enrollment was limited to college students and graduates. But market pressures have opened Facebook up to the entire world, including MySpace refugees. But unlike real-world refugee hotspots like Zimbabwe and the Sudan, Facebook does not have the option of herding these newcomers into guarded camps. The “unwashed masses” are released into the ecosystem, fresh from a wild country with no rules and few police.
Faced with this mass-migration, the only response is to increase control over content and interactions. Along with a fairly explicit Terms of Use, Facebook has an additional “Code of Conduct” page which specifies what harmful behaviour is. However, these legal CYA terms are endemic to every social site on the internet, including MySpace; so what makes Facebook’s response any more effective at maintaining relative stability? The answer lies in its very foundations, upon which every interaction is based.
Facebook’s primary purpose is to create a personalized social map for each member. For every person in the world in relation to one user, he or she is either a “friend,” or “not a friend.” This does not reflect the subtle nuances of daily human interaction, where social relationships are based on time and setting. This binary version of relationships ignores the varied strata of relationships we have with the thousands of people in our lives.
One of the popular complaints I have received from fellow facebookers is that there is no “acquaintance” level of friendship available on Facebook. This leads to much hemming and hawing over whether one should befriend a someone known only casually. Allowing this extra layer of social distinction would open up a slew of problems: one man’s acquaintance may be another man’s friendship. At best this can lead to awkward situations with the natural ebb and rise of relationships. Now both parties become obliged to update these very specific nuances at the appropriate time. One week too early or late with such an update could ruin a potential friendship forever.
But awkward social situations are always present on the social-networking scene, even with the existing friend-or-not system. There must be another reason why Facebook refuses to add these complexities.
At first glance, the friend-or-not system seems to be a portrayal of the good and the bad. That is, friends are “good” and non-friends are “bad.” Hence why we allow only friends to see Facebook information and exclude all others. This thinking is wrong. The two states being represented are the good and the not-good and there is an important disinction. This latter category lumps two major groups together: “possible friends,” i.e. those you do not know, and “never friends,” i.e. enemies.*
The solution to this ambiguity is not simple. Imagine if Facebook allowed each user to rate everyone he knows on a scale of friendship, -10 to +10 (from hate to love, respectively). It may be hard to think anyone would spend a lot of time to rate how much they like somebody. And certainly you could never imagine yourself methodically going through your friend list, ranking each on this scale. But then again, few people predicted us using social networks like Twitter and Facebook at all. Boredom is a powerful force.
Not only that, but this rating system can become a weapon in itself. If we look at the MySpace fiasco, there is no limit to the amount of psychological abuse we can afflict on one another, especially when we mix in the depersonalizing nature of the internet. The potential for social warfare terrifies the Facebook kahunas and rightly so. It is no wonder they take the easier path and keep all interactions in the positive-to-neutral range.
Perhaps there is no solution. If these human nuances are too hard to codify, perhaps the entire Facebook model is flawed. What is worse, as Facebook grows and becomes the dominant social organization tool for the wired generation, our social structure might come to resemble the superficial, binary nature of the friends system. The “friend-or-not” system could slowly rend close friendships. This idea is not too far-fetched. When your lifelong confidant is lumped together online with the vapid hipster you meet at your neighbor’s party, it is equally as easy to invite both to your birthday party and even easier to know exactly what both are doing at this very moment. When the distinction between friends and acquaintances is ignored, when we begin to cover the minute details of life with broad brushstrokes, our relationships suffer.
But what do I know? I’m just a non-friend.
*”Enemy” may seem like a strong word to use in the superficial world of online social networking. This relates to the same lack of stratification that affects our description of positive relationships. Just as there is a difference between a friend and an acquaintance, there is a difference between someone you dislike (a “disquaintance,” to coin a word) and someone you hate.
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(Scene: Friday, 2 a.m. underground at a Brooklyn subway station. The hallway is sparsely populated by a few lone late-night revelers.)
