The Facebook wall is our social document of record. Etched in rock like an Attic tablet, the things said on a wall provide a poignant look back at who said what, and when. Not anymore. Timeline lets you rewrite history.
I noticed today while trying to delete some banal crap off my wall that I was able to, via the new “Edit or Remove” pencil icon, change the date of someone else’s wall posting. So I did. I literally moved what she said back in time, to a month ago (albeit with a tiny clock icon indicating as much). Then I pushed further — I moved another friend’s wall post back to 2006, years before I would even meet her. Luckily, the space-time continuum seems to have maintained its integrity, but what the hell?
What a dishonest, bizarre feature! It must either be a bug or terrible design, because I can’t imagine any reason why it’d be in Facebook’s interests as a social network to allow us to completely revise our social history. Timeline is about life events, such as “overcoming illnesses” and “new relationships”, which have to be added manually — so the ability to edit those make sense. But being able to fling correspondance through past and future? What sort of science fiction Timeline is this?
light487
Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at 8:49 AMOk.. so putting the wrong weight or wrong age is illegal (ok, not yet.. I know.. but for the sake of arguement let’s say the DOJ gets its bill passed) but it’s ok to falsify records?
Richard
Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at 5:58 PMIt’s Facebook…it’s not some sort of legally binding contract or anything of that nature.
Matt L
Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at 10:04 AMDoes it only change it at your end? So, it’s basicly just to personalize your own wall for whatever reason?
Owey
Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at 1:57 PMi still dont have facebook timeline what a crock of shit that is
Jubbing
Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at 7:27 PMI see no point to this at all. So strange.