I’m not secretive about the fact that I don’t like Facebook. I’ve mentioned in other posts that I don’t need daily updates from people I haven’t seen in years. The simple solution is to just not friend those folks, but some of them are incredibly persistent, sending requests four or five times before I cave.
Facebook posted a reminder on its blog this week to remind users that we have methods for dealing with these problems. If you don’t want to friend someone, press the ignore button. They’re never notified. You could also friend the person, let him read your profile, and then unfriend, in which case the person again won’t be notified. If you’re in my situation, though, you have just one recourse. You leave the friend request pending. In that way you never have to deal with the request again.
But I hate that solution. Hate it. I don’t like cluttered message systems, and there’s really no reason Facebook couldn’t implement a simple ignore system, as in, ignore this request and all future requests from this individual. It’s similar to blocking people, which the site allows you to do, just built into the friend request system, making it much easier to manage.
The fact that Facebook saw fit to remind users of these features suggests the site may be getting some negative feedback, and for good reason. Facebook beat MySpace by offering better privacy features, so why not this? Why must I subject myself to the hoard of messages people send to entire friend lists?
