Facebook is an awesome tool to connect with friends and family and share ideas and photos and blah, blah, blah. Let’s keep it funky, Facebook’s worth lies in its ability to be used as a stalking tool. Even if you don’t realize that you’re stalking, that’s really what you’re doing. You sit there and peruse the profiles of people you haven’t seen in years, looking through pictures of their vacations and seeing what their significant other looks like, reading statuses and seeing where they work, etc. Like it or not, you’re kinda stalking their profiles. It’s OK, we all do it!
Well, to add a whole new level of creepiness to Facebook, they’ve created a new feature called Nearby Friends. This optional feature allows you to “continuously” see where your friends’ exact locations are. Users can decide whether to let people know their location within a half mile or a more exact location using a combination of GPS and cell phone towers. And if you do decide to give an exact location, Facebook will give your friends walking directions to get exactly to you, you know, because stalking.
Luckily, for all of you who are creeped out right now, this feature is a voluntary, opt-in service, as opposed to most Facebook features that just magically appear and leave it up to you to figure out how to get rid of them. According to Business Insider, Facebook did take a moment to think about the vast potential for advanced-level stalking:
“To prevent stalking, the function comes with a timer that switches off Nearby Friends after a certain time, for instance one hour. And only friends can see you in Nearby Friends — not friends of friends or members of the public you have not confirmed as friends.
Nearby Friends also produces an activity log, which you can delete at will. The log also produces maps of your whereabouts over time, which you can also delete if you want.”
See sillies! It has a timer! Except that if I should somehow forget to erase where I’ve been with this feature, my previous whereabouts will be up for display indefinitely. So basically, people will just know everything I’ve done, because screw privacy, right?
Facebook also knew that a few of you would be worried about them selling your information to companies so they can bombard you with advertising. Facebook’s Andrea Vaccari pinky-promises that that won’t happen:
“Obviously, the new feature has the potential to produce a lot of new data on users. Facebook product manager Andrea Vaccari says that, currently, none of that data will be used for purposes outside the app. It will not be used to help target advertising, for instance. And Nearby Friends will not be usable by business Pages that you’re fans of — so local restaurants and stores won’t be pinging you with offers when you walk by.”
Pay attention to the word “currently” in that passage. Stay woke, dog.
This all sounds like a horrible idea to me. Frankly, the whole premise of “this should help when you can’t find your friends in the mall or at the airport” seems like pure BS spouting from the mind of a leering stalker. But to each his own. Will any of you use the Nearby Friends feature when it drops?