Re:Information Overload. (Score 2, Insightful)

I think that the information overload isn't being addressed as much here on this forum as privacy has been. I agree about the privacy issues, and consider it a dead topic. In my opinion, the new format isn't about privacy at all but about presentation of information. As a regular user of facebook I have liked being able to choose which of my friends' information I access any given time. If there is some kind of social tension or drama, it can be regulated by chosing not to look at that person's information until the tension is resolved one way or another.

By allowing the users to chose the information they look at on a friends' profile allows users control over sorting data relevent to their interest. The reason it feels like a violation of privacy now even though all that information was readily availible before is because the information is being presented in a way that goes against the grain of the way humans socially organize themselves. We naturally create intricate laws governing personal information and the consumption thereof, even in a setting such as Facebook. With profiles we have the illusion of privacy for ourselves in the knowledge that if our friends are interested enough or our own presentations interesting enough they will bother to read things that normal brain functions consider irrelevant and unimportant.

This new format irritates me because it takes user choice and natural cognitive behavior out of consideration, presenting information about a wide variety of very different people and their inconsequential actions and their own networking which does not always include me. This service presumes a networking model of people that simply does not exist within my personal group of friends and by that presumption forces the network I have connected by simple sharing of profiles into a structure that is unnatural for how I interact with them individually or collectively. They should rethink how and when they change their site, presenting ideas to the community before taking action, much like Slashdot did when they redid their site visually.