I clicked on my Facebook timeline this morning to make sure I had properly adjusted the privacy settings associated with the Washington Post’s Social Reader app, and I was greeted by an interesting surprise: I have two Facebook subscribers!
First thought: Clearly, I’m famous.
Upon further inspection of my subscribers’ identities, though, I found they were the two people who had recently requested to be my friend and been denied. One old acquaintance from high school and one account I think is some type of bot.
Let down. And, concerning.
This looks like the latest confusing aspect of Facebook’s increasingly complicated environment. When we ignore or otherwise do not approve a friend request, we get the feeling that we’ve made our intentions clear – this person shouldn’t be able to see what I post. Dumping them into the subscribers bin so they get notified of any public post is a bit disingenuous, methinks.
There are, to be sure, a number of ways in which this might not be a big deal – if you don’t publish any public updates, for example, your subscribers won’t see anything. Facebook, though, keeps making it tougher for its users – especially the nontechnical ones – to fully grasp the intricacies of its new products. Above all else, that’s just bad customer service.
For now, it’s prompted me to turn off all subscribing. Unfortunate.