Facebook: Anonymous 'Defriending' Is Back

In good news for social networkers who don’t like confrontation, Facebook has closed an apparent loophole in its new “Timeline” feature that briefly allowed users to easily tell which of their former friends had “defriended” them. Slate explains:

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Mark Zuckerberg unveiled Timeline this past Thursday amid a number of other changes and tweaks to the social networking site. In essence, the new feature provides a visual, chronological portrait of your life as Facebook knows it. In Zuckerberg’s words, it makes it easier for users to share the “stories of their lives.” But, as a number of tech blogs were pointing out by Friday, more practically speaking it provided everyone with a rather simple way to tell which of their former friends had ended their online friendship.

While the fix will spare plenty of us hurt feelings and some passive aggressive IMs, not everyone’s pleased. “Major bummer,” BuzzFeed writes. “This was one of the best parts about the new Timeline!”

Discussing the launch of Timeline, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, “Millions and millions of people have spent years curating the stories of their lives, and today there’s just no good way to share them … we think this is a real problem, and we think that we have the solution.” Sounds good. Still, most of us would agree that announcements of who annoyed us enough to get “defriended” are parts of our stories that are better kept private.

Read more at Slate.

In other news: Jay-Z Announces Plans for Brooklyn Nets.