New Facebook, same as the Old

This morning I found an open letter from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on the front page of Facebook when I opened the site. It addressed the news feed feature, which debuted a few days ago. The feature seemed to be massively unpopular—I know because its architecture allowed me to see that many of my friends immediately joined anti-news feed groups. My sister, who has a high school facebook, was sort of terrified by it. But why?

I think it's a little hypocritical to complain about Facebook getting creepy all of a sudden. It's only doing for us what we try to do on our own—check to see who's commenting on who's wall, who has mutual friends with you, etc. Some people use it more innocently (which simply means less), and others use it almost exclusively to spy on the social game. We stalk and we stalk, and then Facebook adapts to our desires/habits, and we freak out.

But there are four things that make it threatening, I suppose.
1) Inescapability. This fear is also hypocritical, though because all information on Facebook is, by nature something you wish to be known. If you change your "Looking For" section, you want people to know about it—maybe not everyone, but you do mean for others to find out.
2) Centrality. What does it mean not to have to work so hard to spy on your friends, but to have it right there for you complete and entire? I think that part of the outcry against the "new" facebook is a bit of disappointment that the chase is now pointless. You no longer can "discover" that your crush is now looking to date, or whatever. It's just reported to you, and that's not fun.
3) Immediacy. I suppose it is a little worrying to know that as soon as you change something on your profile, people will know. But I'm not sure why. Again, the possibility of this happening has merely turned into a quasi-certainty. Not sure if that's worth fretting about.
4) Third party knowledge--the idea that Facebook is intercepting what are essentially communications between you and your friends. Again, this is pretty silly. Of course Facebook knows what you're doing. It always has. And of course, it really doesn't care. It is extremely unlikely that the site maintainers spend much time spying on you. It feels like this information is being taken from you by force, but of course it isn't. If you break up with someone and do it on Facebook, you're volunteering the information to any interested party. Now you're just volunteering it to non-interested parties as well. Facebook's knowledge has nothing to do with it.

Zuckerberg and the other Facebook staff have now created a way to set which "stories" get picked up by the news feed. I suppose this is all well and good—I'll probably make use of it, but like the rest of Facebook, it's more of an act than actual substance. People's habits were changed by the new Facebook, not their privacy, and I think that's what upset them.