With recent rumors going around that Facebook may be working on an e-mail service, it has become as clear as ever that the social network giant will one day grow up to be Skynet. But a cooler, more youth savy one.
But the site's power rests on it's users sharing information with each other. Facebook wants everyone to have access to everyone else's info. Also, advertisers. Lots of advertisers. This is, after all, what sparked all the privacy concerns and outcries over the past couple years. People are fine with showing their friends every mundane detail of their boring day, but not gigantic corporations who only see them as fuel for the future T-800s. So, somewhat reluctantly, Facebook restored user control of privacy settings in the most complicated and frustrating way possible.
But they still want you to share as much information with as many people as possible, i.e. they want you to make more friends. Facebook hates it when people are like "I only friend people I know in real life" because that means you aren't friending the random strangers who might be scammers just trying to get at your information. Ideally, they want us all to be friends with everyone.
Just look at the evolution of the friend request. At the dawn of Facebook, when someone sent you a friend request you had two choices: "Accept" and "Decline." After all, maybe you don't want to be friends with that person. We aren't friends with every homeless person we meet on the way to work, the same should apply to online interaction, right? It's our choice who we want to be friends with.
Then the choices changed. We could still "Accept" a request, but "Decline" was replaced with "Ignore." A much more passive-aggressive approach, it seems less like you don't want to be friends with them, and more like it's just not something you want to deal with. But the semblance of a choice is still there, so cool.
But now, "Ignore" has been replaced with "Not Now." This implies that you will be friends with this person, just at a later date. There is no longer a choice as to who you are going to be friends, but more an issue of how long you can hold out before Facebook forces you to accept it.
Because they will. Oh, they will. Using basic math I just made up, the next step from "Not Now" is "Or We Will Find You And Toss Your Body Down A Canyon." And they can find you very easily, because you conveniently put your address up on your profile (oh cruel fate!).
Why does Facebook want you to be friends with everyone? Information. The easiest way for Facebook to pair up advertisers with your own interests is through your friends. Everytime one of those "What Harry Potter/Twilight/Super Hero character are you?" quizzes gets passed around, the third parties who made those apps get access to the information of whoever it was who took it. That's why the ads that appear on your side bar appear to be customized specifically to your tatses. So when Sarah McInsecure keeps posting quizzes about what princess she thinks she is because a quiz told her so, gradually her friends start taking the quizzes too. And Facebook takes in even more information about users that can be sold off to third parties.
If, however, Sarah only has 10 friends on Facebook, the number of potential suckers goes down dramatically. That's why it's important to Facebook that you become friends with every person you ever come into contact with, and then some. It's the only way they can continue to grow, and absorb all the knowledge that ever existed.
The only solution, obviously, is to stop being friends with people. The only way to bring down Facebook is hatred. We must all become bitter enemies, whose undying scorn or each other will prevent Facebook from becoming the ultimate power it wants to be. So please, do yourself a favor and start burning bridges left and right. Hate is our only hope.
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