tedr:
The reason I said fuck you facebook last night, and the reason I don’t like getting an email from Facebook saying ‘Friend X wants to check you in’ is that they default to forcing their users to use a feature. And they are more than happy to send you unlimited emails to ry and do it.
When I log in to Facebook today to block these emails the first thing I saw was he above modal. It again makes me want to say fuck you Facebook, fuck you slowly with a chainsaw. The options they give their users are ‘Accept Now or Decide Later’ they don’t even give an option to ‘Reject Now’. So really it says ‘Accept Now or Accept Later.’ And of course you won’t be surprised to hear that after going through my user account settings I’m still not sure if I’m able to stop getting these emails.
The reason I say fuck you to Facebook is not because it annoys me - even though it does - it’s because they are creating a norm of what Internet users should expect their options to be which is accept now or accept later. People like my mother and sister get steamrolled by these types of options. I know because they ask me ‘do I have to do this’ and ‘why does your brother want me to do this, I don’t want to hurt his feelings by not doing it’. We realize it’s just a viral conversion strategy and can make an independent decision. Most users at the moment think they are hurting a friend’s feelings if they say no.
Sure I can delete my account from Facebook - if I jump through all the hoops - this is not about me. This is about the mindset they are inculcating in 500 million Internet users that you need to do what the website wants. It’s a mini dictatorship done under the guise of having a choice and it’s only going to get more and more aggressive.
