Facebook’s new relationship pages create an uproar on the web
Facebook is no stranger to controversies. Even as the company brags about being the largest social networking website in the world, it has drawn fire from users and experts for a number of reasons, ranging from pay to promote posts to changes to the site’s layout. The latest controversy surrounds Facebook’s new ‘couple page’, also dubbed as the ‘relationship page’, which shows combine tagged photos and posts of two users in a relationship.
Facebook’s couple page is very similar to recently revamped Friendship Page, which shows all Facebook content connecting the two user. You can see the relationship you have with any of Facebook friends, and a record of each interaction you had. You can check out your own relationship at http://facebook.com/us. The link takes you to a virtual tour of your love life, with photos, wall posts and photo comments shared between you and the person with whom you are in a relationship with. There’s the huge Timeline cover photo as well.
While a lot of users may like the idea of sharing such a public relationship story, there are some who are bit skeptic and critical of an automatic Facebook page obsessively documenting their relationship. Zdnet’s Eileen Brown in her report titled ‘Why Facebook’s relationship pages creep me out over privacy’ points out that the new feature lets others stalk your Facebook friends in a more in-depth way.
“How do I escape the Facebook friendship stalker pages? Well, I can stop logging in to Facebook, I can stop updating my status and I can stop ‘Liking’ things. I can remove all of my personal information. I can stop referring to any of my friends by never using the ‘@’ symbol in comments,” she wrote.
“I can prevent anyone tagging any images of me, and I can remove any tags from existing photos. I can stop allowing anyone to post to my wall and I can never post to anyone else’s wall. In short, I can stop using Facebook to interact with anyone,” she added.
PC Mag also criticised the new feature, stating: “Like a digital scrapbook that you never asked to be created, the update includes a Share Friendship button for easy bragging rights.”
The Telegraph’s Emma Barnett also slammed Facebook over the new feature. “Please take note Facebook executives,” she wrote. “I enjoy being able to share the information I wish and curate in the way I want. I have no desire for your technology teams to help me organize my photos — nor do I wish to have a shared ‘couples’ Facebook profile with my other half on which you automatically curate our relationship.”
What do you think of Facebook’s new Couples Page? Let us know in the comments section below: