Big Brother Facebook shows exactly who reads your posts

Now your friends can no longer claim that they didn’t like on your amazingly witty Facebook status update because they didn’t see it. Facebook is rolling out a new feature that allows you to see exactly who has seen your posts on Facebook. Creepy? Possibly. The ‘seen’ feature is already part of Facebook’s messenger and chat services, which is useful because now you have concrete proof that you DID say something important and your friend saw it, even if he/she didn’t reply. [caption id=“attachment_375914” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Now know who is ignoring you: AP[/caption] It could also work in groups, especially for important messages. TechCrunch looks at the positive side of the read receipts saying,

“In the news feed, though, it could make posting seem more like a conversation where there are cues to tell if someone is listening, rather than feeling like you’re talking into a black hole. Even if people didn’t agree / Like, you’d know they had heard you. It would also show users they have a community supporting them when they post less “Likable” updates about personal hardship.”

But of course it also seems like Facebook is one step closer to implementing a social network type ‘Big Brother’ scenario. Bad enough that everyone knows what you did and what you like. Now they can see what you have seen? Cue creepy music. Katie Solomon from TechWatch agrees, calling the move ’largely unnecessary’, adding, “It’s not clear if you can turn this off if you don’t want it to be known that you were on Facebook reading a group post at 11.23am when you were supposed to be in that big marketing meeting on the third floor”. Shudder.