I still remember how much controversy the Facebook Newsfeed created when it was released several years ago. People worked themselves into frenzies about privacy and threatened to deactivate. Few people actually did, and ultimately the Newsfeed became one of the most dynamic (and addicting) elements of the whole Facebook platform. Could the uproar about Facebook’s new “Timeline” feature be the same type of issue?
I don’t think so. The Timeline concept is flawed – and not because of privacy, UI, or anything even remotely technical. The problem is simple – people, and their online identities, change. The Timeline, by capturing and cataloging all of our past activity on the site, prevents us from ever cutting loose and starting over.
In the past, you could change your profile picture. You could delete that tacky album you posted during Freshman orientation. Even if you didn’t actively delete content, your activity – drunk photos, inside jokes, midnight rants – faded away with time. You graduated from college, and your profile became more professional, and your online identity evolved with your actual identity.
Guess what? With the new Timeline, all that content is back. And if you have been even partially active on Facebook for the past few years, there is simply way too much of it to possibly delete manually. There is no button to simply “delete all” (trust me, I’ve looked). For better or for worse, your whole social network – friends from middle school, coworkers, extended family – can now see everything.
With one click, your former boss who you now get drinks with can jump to 2005 and be immersed in your teenage melodrama. The person you’re dating can jump to the year of your last relationship and see exactly what you posted to your former lover. Sure, you could access these old posts before Timeline, but it was much harder, and most people didn’t.
The Timeline is interesting from a personal perspective – it is funny and entertaining to click back and relive a memory – but sharing this so easily with Facebook friends is weird. And because the Timeline catalogues everything, it makes changing your identity impossible – it is simply too difficult to go comb through years of content.
And identities do change. People grow up, change opinions, become more mature. Facebook should represent our current identity – the one that is relevant for the people who we interact with today. The events and people who shaped our current identity can’t really be represented on the Timeline, and even if they could, we don’t need to share this with all of our Facebook friends.
The Timeline is too much. Facebook, by making our content so easily accessible, has made our online lives a lot less manageable, and this will ultimately turn many people off to the service. I don’t want everything I do to be catalogued forever. I just want to be able to share things with my friends, and then move on with my life. Thanks to Facebook, my online identity won’t be moving on with me.
The content has always been accessible. They just made it easier for novice computer users to access without having to manually change the url to access an old page. Also, they do give you a probation period in which you can remove and reorganize what you want before it goes public.
Funny.
If you post anything on facebook or a website you don’t own or control you are no longer in control of your identity.
Unfortunately it will be too late for most people.
True you can cut loose from things and start over paying little or no respect to the past.
However, whatever path chosen going forward is always built upon all past experiences. You can’t escape those experiences (the good and bad) and they absolutely define us.
I actually started cleaning the web of references to myself. Nothing to hide but nothing to brag about either. The problem is that all this data is already being used against us in ways we barely have idea. Soon, governments will demand all online activity be stored for reference. Ince analyzed by experts they’ll know more about us individually and as a group than we would ever know. I just doubt that the intent is to help me become a better person and make more money, but to police, manipulate policy and profit. If you practice social, I have come to believe you do a disservice to us all and endanger freedom and liberties.
Do yourself a favor. Make a phone call, take your friends out. Old fashioned ways remain better ways.
There are much bigger problems with Facebook, and it’s not Timeline.
If you want to use Facebook, there are only two reasonable approaches.
1) disregard the consequences of years of accumulated posts
2) delete posted content as you go along; post a link, delete it a week later; post a photo, delete it a month later; and so on. You enforce your own liquidation preferences that way. It takes very little time to maintain.
Great post, but I disagree with your premise.
1) I post regularly to Facebook, sometimes 3 or 4 times per day. I have been active on Facebook since 2007. I was able to go back and review every post in my Timeline. It’s not that hard. Yes, it took me about 4 days to do it – I did one year per day. But it’s not hard. I ended up deleting a few things, not too many.
2) People did go back in your Facebook history before timeline. When I started dating a new girl last year, she started asking me about things that happened the year before. I knew she must have been scrolling down “more posts… more posts… more posts…” in Facebook. It is not THAT hard for anyone determined to see old posts.
So Timeline is no big deal to me. Yes people change, but they don’t change THAT much. And if you had melodrama 2 years ago, chances are you still have melodrama. Don’t add your boss to Facebook.
This is Zuckerberg’s entire mission. By making our lives more transparent he wants to elevate human behavior. He has said this is his goal repeatedly.
I am sure some of the nerdy people can write a script that can delete an account’s activity between a given time range.
there is a way to limit the visibility of all your old posts
https://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=privacy&ref=mb
then Limit the Audience for Past Posts.
Hope this helps.
this doesn’t bother me at all
If that was not enough, then there is a new way of “forcing” people to use timeline. Activate any app, and you get the timeline. I added goodreads recently to my FB profile, and after few seconds was staring at the Timeline. And if that was not enough, then we can’t disable the timeline too….
I already use FB once in 2 weeks or something, maybe I’ll drop that too now.
I’m not sure why I would want to view Timeline. It adds very little of value to the Facebook experience. If I wanted to see this type of thing (my life over time), what I would really be interested in would be a narrative view of my life. When you reminisce with friends on things like “Remember when we went to the beach…”, this is an enjoyable experience. If Facebook were to somehow allow you to post these types of memories – connecting your Facebook friends who were there and involved in that memory – it would be a much richer user experience. Unfortunately, just seeing posts and photos over time adds nothing to the experience.
Excellent point. I saw some stuff on my timeline so ancient that I’d forgotten it, and then shared it again, but I’m weird. I imagine many of us have posted stuff we’ve outgrown. Why else would I delete my old blog posts so often?
There are some other, more stalker-related issues. For more information, click on over http://defeasiblereasoning.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/facebook-this-facebook-that-update-your-status/. Tell us what you think in the comments.
Amen.
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I can’t move or delete some pictures (any) pictures.If i try nothing going on.I click on penn to be move or delete isue-picture-…nothing,just thes 3 lines walking like the comp.trying but nothing’s change.Sorry for my Tarzan english.Your Mukic Igor-Serbia
Hey folks,
* I have Chrome and Windows Vista on my laptop and I also use Timeline Remove and when it’s on my profile page won’t open. I get the profile pic at the top but that’s all. Additionally, if I shut off Timeline Remove and reset my page it opens perfectly, only in Timeline. We need to effectively get rid of Timeline altogether. That’s the potent and real issue here afterall!
So, we should all just stop bickering back and forth in these forums and fight back. I’m sure Ol’ Mark ( ‘the blow boy’ ) just love’s the fact that we cannot organize effectively. Yep, he’s sittin’ there in his pimp chair and central air, up there on the hill and trying his damnedest to forget what it was like to be that struggling average person like you and I. He’s thoroughly enjoying all this crap. He’s like all the rest, those ‘po-boys’ who struck up the band and got rich on the internet and now could give a flying cat’s ass what we think or feel. Time to show him we ain’t f***ing around!!!! – Irish Tommy Moran