http://www.facebook.com/photo......7967973537

I think we should think about it, is social network sites what we really want? The misleading idea behind connecting people is really keeping people apart.
It can connect you to a friend in the other end of the world, but thats not exclusive. I’ve seen people within the same building socializing on the internet.

Come on!! wake up people…This is really getting seriously dumb. Stop it

Jason Kincaid reports on TechCrunch:The Facebook News Feed is a strange beast. Upon its release, it was met with an extremely negative reception as members protested their new ‘auto-stalker’, but it has slowly gained acceptance as users learned the…

My little sister DID see my “Mourning Jessica Alba’s Vagina” test event, and she was very, very proud.

You are also absolutely correct that someone could have read the feed story before you have hidden it; but that is a pathetic reason not to try and stop further reading of it. Someone could already have seen it in my mini feed, but there is still the option to hide it. Obviously there are limitations to what can be done, but I don’t believe pulling it from a friends feed is such a limitation.

Also, it is true that my main aim is to change the behaviour; however, if that is really not possible, than at minimum the text should be changed, and users should be made more aware of the behaviour.

“I would at least expect it to tell the browser that it’s cache was out of date.”

Fair enough, how about screen shots of a web page? You are splitting hairs here and completely missing the point that a full deletion of any digital broadcast is absurd.

“you seem to be making the mistaken assumption that once a story is in your mini-feed it is *immediately* sent out to your friends’ news feeds”

Actually, Luke, I am not. I am maken the fairly well guided assumption that once an action is executed events are triggered to create a “story” and begin the propogation of that content to both your mini-feed and your friends’ news feeds. The fact that arrival times are off set or decision points along the way could prevent that story from actually being published in some or all of your friends’ feeds in no way indicates that it would be possible for you to trigger a subsequent event that could for all intents and purposes “catch-up” to the first and infuence its ability to be published.

“it would be very easy for stories to be pulled from friends’ feeds, unlike trying to pull emails back from remote inboxes (as this would take co-operation on a grand scale)”

Nah, both involve the exact same things — the ability to publish a message that indicates a previously received message is invalid and clients that support the protocol to the extent that while both “messages” are present the first is not displayed. This type of agreement on a protocol is what allows many web-technologies to function so it is far from the “co-operation on a grand scale” you are making it out to be. That said, you seem to be missing the point here. I’m not saying it is not possible to remove the remote item, I’m saying a true retraction of the item is impossible due to the possibility (likelihood?) that the remote item was already consumed before the deletion was made. So any attempts to confirm or strengthen your belief in the contrary would simply be playing on your, in the best case, naivete.

“Finally, if when I deleted an email in my sent box I was shown a dialog box saying…”

Yes, agreed, the text is misleading. That’s not really your point though, is it?You aren’t arguing for a text change, you are arguing for the introduction of a retraction feature.

cheers

vincent

The ‘and’ implies it is doing something *in addition* to removing it from your mini-feed, and all that could possibly mean is it would stop it showing in friends’ news feeds (what other way could someone see it, that is being prevented *in addition* to removing it from your mini-feed?). Also, if the ‘and’ did indeed still apply to the context of the mini-feed, then there should still be a viable option if it were negated; however, there isn’t, it just doesn’t make sense “Hiding will remove the story from your mini-feed but won’t prevent anyone from seeing it” - you can’t remove it from your mini-feed without preventing users from seeing it in you mini-feed, so arguing that it is pertinent only to the context of the mini-feed just doesn’t make sense.

It would almost make sense in the context you suggest if it said “Hiding will remove the story from your Mini-Feed preventing anyone from seeing it”, but would still be rather misleading, and it would not *at all* be the users fault if they misinterpreted it. It is Facebook’s responsibility to make it clear, not the user’s responsibility to try and guess the context it applies to.

Finally, everything aside, even if we pretend it does make sense applying just to the context of the mini-feed, and even if we pretend that it wouldn’t be misleading if that were that the case, then *still* 85% of users who responded to my poll do not think that it should function that way.

@Original Sin - off topic, but there was another inconsistent ‘X’, it’s the one in your news feed, where clicking it registered you disinterest in the story, sometimes made the story smaller, but did not remove it. It seems they’ve got rid of these now though anyway.