Need some more help choosing an inane conversation
topic with your online friends? Don’t panic! Facebook appears keen to help you.
As Uber employee Chris Messina spotted over the weekend, Facebook is running a “small test”
that purports to help Messenger users start a chat by offering conversation
starters.
What may make some users feel uncomfortable about
“Conversation Topics”, however, is that it is – quelle surprise! – using
information that Facebook has learnt about your friends, such as places they
have been, events they are planning to attend, or music to which they have been
listening to help it suggest what you might want to talk about.
To be fair, this is information that your Facebook
friends have chosen to share already on Facebook – although you may not have
noticed amid the endless stream of inane memes and cat videos.
What will undoubtedly make some folks feel
creeped-out, however, is the rising realisation of just how much
Facebook has been learning about people (and by extension you), and its
ability to mine this personal information for its own ends.
And, if you’re one of those people (and let’s face
it, this is probably most Facebook users) who has added hundreds of people to
your Facebook friends circle who aren’t actually close friends then
there’s an inevitable creepy feeling that it’s now become easier than ever for
a non-close friend to suddenly be reaching out to you to discuss your hobbies
or recent outings.
Don’t agree? Put yourself in the shoes of a young
woman, with a gaggle of male acquaintances in her social network, who might
soon be invited to start a chat about the young woman’s favourite bar, ask her
what she thought of the Hollywood blockbuster she saw last night, or ask if
she’ll be at the same dance class next Wednesday.
It’s worth bearing in mind, of course, that
Facebook has carried out plenty of experiments in the past, offering a small
subset of users a feature, before eventually turning it either into a new
facility that’s available to everyone or quietly dumped.
But if Facebook does push “Conversation Topics” to
the masses, it will be interesting to see if the social networking giant will
care about adding extra granularity into its privacy settings – giving users a
choice as to whether their Facebook ‘friends’ will be offered suggestions on
how to start a chat with them.
Ultimately, as ever with Facebook, the most
important decision will be about what information you choose to share with
Facebook, and how you use privacy settings to determine who it gets shared
with.