Facebook wtf

I had planned to write and post about the historic amount of time I have invested in Borderlands but I ended up spending too much freakin’ time fighting with facebook. Around mid-afternoon I started getting all these messages from friends asking why they could no longer post or even see my wall. It was a surprise to me, too. I have ignored facebook for, well, ever but since the theatre community and more and more of my friends use facebook almost exclusively instead of e-mail or IM these days I started checking it more often, just to keep in touch. Man, had this existed back when I was in high school I never would have learned how to interact with people outside of hockey. Granted, I didn’t actually learn how to be social until, uh, university. Sad, I know. To say I’ve spent the vast vast majority of my life being ‘socially awkward’ is an understatement!! I used to be ridiculously shy but I’ve worked hard to overcome it. There was a time when it was near impossible for me to look people in the eye. Yikes.

Let’s move on. Thanks to the new privacy updates, partially spurred on by the Canadian Privacy Commission, something has gone horribly awry. Random friends can post on my wall while the rest can’t even see that it exists or only see events that I am attending. Right now I have opened it all up and set everything viewable by everyone to absolutely zero effect. An older friends list can still see everything but that’s a small sample size. This list consists entirely of my brother and some old hockey friends. I deleted this list, along with all others, on the erroneous assumption that it was lists causing the discrepancy in privileges to no avail. Not the best move? No clue. Facebook help still seems to reflect the old settings, many of which have disappeared with the update. The EFF has the best rundown of the changes and what they could mean for you. The most bizarre thing is that updates from 2008 DO show up for everyone, however, nothing more recent appears, up to and included my present status update. Should you be able to see it, please feel free to post on my wall. New posts by friends seem to show up for everyone, too.

I’d be absolutely thrilled should any of you know of a solution to this strangely aggravating issue. Thrilled, I say. At 6am I should be sleeping and not messing around with a broken system. Hopefully everything will take effect but there is a delay due to their systems getting hammered. Hope springs eternal. I’m even hopeful that my friends have the sense not to open their profile, and thus mine, to every random app on the planet… despite the fact that I get forwarded e-mails of hoaxes that have been around since the 90s! If that’s not optimistic optimism then I don’t know what is :)

Tagged as: phooey