The inside story of Facebook’s biggest setback | Rahul Bhatia | Technology | The Guardian

Facebook, hidden services, and https certs | The Tor Blog

…according to a Stanford University study:

(The researcher) suggests we might do well to consider Facebook profiles as something akin to the airbrushed photos on the covers of women’s magazine. No, you will never have those thighs, because nobody has those thighs. You will never be as consistently happy as your Facebook friends, because nobody is that happy.

Of course. And never forget that FB’s primary intent is to generate revenues – they’re now going to put our Likes and such in service of their advertising customers. Even if we did candidly share our low points here, it would be for the benefit of peddlers of happiness promising products.

A point not covered in the piece is that there are norms for the kind of not-so-happy stuff that does get shared: death of a pet, injuries or common surgeries of family, for e.g., are OK; being unable to pay bills, or how others’ seeming happiness is bringing you down are not.

Seems to me that this may not be unlike how we present ourselves when we’re in pubic non-virtually. However, we don’t get others’ selective states as a barrage in reality like we do online. Nor is our behavior in reality mediated by FB’s design choices and carefully engineered options.