Facebook’s been running TV ads, promoting their “groups” feature, promising that there are groups on Farcebucket for any interest. Which is only partially true, and is partially a load of crap.

First, it’s interesting that they’re advertising. That’s a good sign: it means they’re worried that people are leaving them for better places on the web.

Second, anyone who uses Fakebook’s groups knows that they don’t really work the way you’d like them to. For example, if you join a group, and you expect to see everything that’s posted to that group… you won’t. If you fuck around in the settings of the group and set Notifications to “all”, maybe you’ll see everything. Otherwise they’ll just show you the posts they select. And no matter what, you’ll miss stuff, in the flood of posts randomly selected from your 873 Friends.

It’s important to note that Facebook doesn’t even create these groups they’re selling: other users of Facebook do. So if you get a petty tyrant or an idiot or someone who just doesn’t give a fuck… but who squats on a particular topic name, you’re stuck with them in charge of it. But at the same time, Fuckbox still has ultimate authority over them, so if a group gets a member who starts reporting art as “pornographic” the admin is powerless to do anything about it.

And I speak here as the admin of a group: Queer Comix. I have some control over who can post stuff to it. But I still live in ongoing anxiety that some dorkweasel from Felchbutt will step in and censor stuff that even I post in it, and block me from administrating it! I’ve had to recruit a backup admin to take over in case that happens.