Why I Hate The New Facebook

This weekend millions will be holding a boycott of Facebook. I'm one of at least 2.7 million people who hate the New Facebook. Here's why.

I was once in an exclusive Internet club called Facebook.

When Facebook first broke onto the scene, everybody I knew was still using Livejournal, and my more web-savvy peers all reluctantly had Myspaces, but only because you needed a profile to stalk other people's profiles properly.

At first Facebook was only available at certain universities, and for the most part, you could only view the profiles of people from your own school. What seemed like a limitation, however, became the perfect tool for allowing personal information to be shared.

It made contact more simple. It wasn't just a website, it was a tool, and it made my social interactions in college less awkward than they needed to be. Everything from running a club to throwing a party could be done in one place.

But this social Garden of Eden couldn't last for long. Like all great places on the Internet, Facebook gained popularity and opened up to the global network. My little clique of schoolmates expanded to include jerks I knew in high school, a manager and co-worker from my place of employment, and an estranged and awkward ex-girlfriend.

As everyone and their mother's best friend's son who you used to play with on occasion as a kid joined Facebook, the need to advertise seemed justifiable. That much web traffic was costly. It was a small price to pay for such a unique social tool.

A small advertisement, tailored to your interests, was barely asking much, and we nodded our heads and said, "Yeah, okay Mark Zuckerburg. We'll give you a little bit of money because you're doing a good job. I'm efficiently stalking everybody I ever knew around the clock, and that's one addictive drug."

But like all drug dealers, Mark Zuckerburg was just starting us out on the gateway stuff. And now that you're rocking an awesome social buzz, he's upping the price. He knows you're a social junkie and the stuff he's got, the new Internet smack he's peddling, it's going to be even worse for you. You can moan and complain, but it's all he's got. He's shut down all the other dealers in town (Myspace, Livejournal, et cetera), and now he's the only guy. You're taking this new drug and you're going to like it. And it comes, of course, at a heftier price.

Now, I'm no stranger to the Internet. I've got a Livejournal. I did Myspace. I've got almost 200 subscribers on Youtube. I even did the Angelfire website thing back in the day, coding HTML by hand late at night on my family's Web TV.

I've seen the rise and fall of many a website. I've seen the free service turn into an ad-sponsored service, turn into one giant mess over and over again. It just happens when a site becomes popular; it needs money to run itself and so something always has to give.

In most cases, the price you pay is reasonable. Myspace is an advertisement disguised as a website on the homepage, but at least you can deck out your profile and always keep a playlist of your favorite music. Livejournal offers a reasonable paid account plan to have more accessibility. If not, a free account will do just fine for most people.

I've dealt with the price of a website's boom, but the price Facebook has has asked for is unacceptable. And no, I'm not referring to the two advertisements, nor the unflattering long spam bar on the side (the kind of thing that Facebook was always supposed to be above.)

For the New Facebook we’ve had to sacrifice accessibility and fun so that someone else can make money. As the New Facebook (and it's always called "New Facebook" like "New Coke") rolled out, the outcry was bigger than ever.

Several Facebook groups popped up asking one million people to stand against the changes done to Facebook. Many stood together not only met this goal, but beat it; the biggest (and my personal stomping ground) now holds 2.7 million people.

Those are not numbers to scoff at. If 2.7 million people all packed up, moved to another site and then invited all of their friends, there could be quite the mass exodus from Facebook. They'll even use Facebook to tell their friends where they're going. I myself told everyone I know how to find me on Twitter via Facebook.

But as the weeks since the initial forced change occurred, the fighters march on, weary and angry. Weary because Mark Zuckerburg has refused to hear them out. Angry because they have legitimate gripes with the new website and he's refused to say anything except "deal with it." He's not stepped down from his throne of money to work with the people who got him there, to fix the website that they just want to use properly once more.

The man behind the curtain has been revealed. He’s a greedy Harvard drop-out who got the idea to bamboozle an entire generation of fellow college students into paying off his student loans, with a couple extra billion to spare. Not only that, he's got Bill Gates whispering in his ear, and so it's no surprise the New Facebook's application menu sits right above your Windows start button and is essentially the same thing. I can see Mr. Zuckerburg for what he really is; a computer twerp who ripped off Myspace, fixed its problems, and repackaged it.

And it's going to be sad when it eventually crumbles under its own weight, especially to do so at record speed. People left Myspace mostly because of spam and intrusive ads, and it looks like Facebook is about to go that route. It may be even worse because Facebook sacrifices the fun and accessibility it once toted in order to make room for more advertisements. Facebook went from being neat to sterile; from being well-maintained to neutered altogether. The wall/news feed combo is an attempt to make the site more like Twitter or other feed sites. Except the execution is sloppy, and they make sure that the advertisements the most important story. You might not find out that your friend recently updated their profile, but you'll be sure to see that advertisement for Careerbuilder.com with your friend's picture next to it, as if he gives it his personal thumbs up.

Thus Facebook degrades into nothing more than one big information farm. As a user, I'm nothing but a crop to be sold for the highest bidder. In order to let people know I'm into No Doubt, I have to deal with advertisements for an Internet music game that totes, "We don't have any No Doubt songs, but we might get them...sometime...eventually."

I yearn to be a weed in this information farm. I want to change my favorite bands to nonsense like, "Tuesdays are the worst," and my favorite movies will include "I Go to the Store to Buy Things."

If they won't listen to me, I won't play their game. I'll post a thousand pictures and take up all the space, and not pay a dime of it with any of my information. I'll be there, accessible to somebody who wants to get a hold of me, but I won't let some guy get rich quick from my information

And the thing is he's only setting himself up for the next nerd.

The more he ignores people's complaints, the more he's making them branch out to new networks, giving other dropout punks the idea to take Facebook, fix the problems and repackage it.

Hopefully they do it soon before Mark Z finds out about this article and boots me out of Facebook; Me, an old Facebook veteran, who only wants him to listen to what people are saying, and to at least work with users to find some sort of way that we can all get along. If he doesn't, then the already disillusioned masses are going take root in someone else's info farm.

It's only a matter of time.