Users testing out Facebook's new "Timeline" profile might have noticed that they could see who "unfriended" them in an ordered manner. Facebook's since patched the so-called "bug," but not before everybody swarmed on to see who unfriended them.
The outcry on the feature was of course more "invasion of privacy," but was it really? Yes and no. Currently, if a friend unfriends you on Facebook, there's no clear list to show you who decided to cut ties with you. Your friend count list will go down one, but you'll have to actually sift through your list to find out who removed you. So technically, the feature to see who unfriended you was always right there.
With Timeline, Facebook opened a new can of worms by making it easier to actually see who unfriended you and when they did it.
As you can guess, lots of "friendships" were probably made worse when people found out they were unfriended months or years ago.
Not patching over the "bug" before it rolled out to Facebook's 800 million users would have been a disaster waiting to happen. Thankfully Facebook did patch it, but labeling it a "bug" kind of shows you the social network's intentions. Zuckerberg's made it clear before that he wants Facebook to be transparent, but it can't ever do so without users relinquishing privacy. One of these days, he's just going to press the "privacy: open by default" button and users will have no choice but to bend to his will or leave.
Privacy and Facebook go hand-in-hand. Now, did you know that Facebook tracks cookies when you're logged off? Facebook denies it uses your info to plug into advertising databases, but do you believe them?
Maybe Facebook does know too much, eh?
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Via CNET
