Kirk here. Facebook has instituted a major change to their page editing and management interface. It may not be so noticeable to most users but it’s a big change – for the worse – for me as someone managing and looking after the page.
The change that has the biggest impact on page participants (not editors) is that it is no longer possible to post to the page as a guest. Moreover, the posts in which participants shared information to the page as guests (this was in a category called “community”) seem to have been lost.
All this reminded me of the concept of en****tification, propounded by Cory Doctorow. The basic idea is that modern internet platforms attract you with good services/features, make you dependent, and then reduce the quality or the experience to maximize profits. The reduction in quality is bad enough to be irritating but not so bad as to get you to break your ties with the service on which you have become depended (and where you have built a community).
This latest change has nudged my love-hate relationship with Facebook a bit farther in the “hate” direction. :(
