The social network has crossed the line and needs to back off, writes Rebecca Lloyd.
Dear Facebook,
The past year or so has seen our relationship change. I'm not sure I was ever as committed to it as you are but I could see the potential and I didn't want to let my family and friends down so I persevered. Mostly, I thought, it was working out all right.
But you can't ever leave a fairly good thing be, can you Facebook?
First you began deciding for me what I would and would not want to read from my friends and the pages I had chosen to follow.
It was bossy and patronising, but you did kind of have a point – there is way too much information pouring through this platform and it was much easier for you to just shut down a chunk of it than to offer something I might actually want, like proper curatorial tools or the capacity to use italics.
Oh dear, though, it didn't stop there.
Then you started rustling about in my timeline when I wasn't looking and leaping out to wave old photos in my face because my life was so awesome I needed to share it TWICE. This struck me as a little unbalanced because you were stopping my friends and me from seeing so many of these future memories even for the *first* time.
Not content with your occasional personal chronology raid, you then started lurking around directly behind me more often. You're now collecting all my images, daily, and urging me to share, share, share.
You even put on your crazy scrapbook lady hat and make albums and slideshows for me to share. I suppose it's because I must have been underestimating my awesomeness by failing to present it to the world looking pretty. With glitter. And cut-outs.
And yet – and this bit bothers me a lot – you continue to extort money from me if I want people who have chosen to follow my company page to actually see ANYTHING I post there.
Your new daily greeting thing, Facebook? It has to stop. And the "Yay team" sport barracking? Please don't. You're just making it worse by pretending to care who wins.
It wasn't fun at the beginning, and now it's downright creepy.
Go home, Facebook. You aren't my friend, you're my enabler and I'm sure you have better things to do. Like rolling in a field made of my money, or allowing bold and italics in posts.
Don't call me for a while, OK?
![Illustration: Simon Letch](http://web.archive.org./web/20170909181520im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/k/w/3/l/i/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gkw3a9.png/1447670991780.jpg)
Bec
40 comments
Comment are now closed