Facebook seems hell bent on making itself no longer just a place for interacting with friends.

Facebook prefers the Top Stories sorting of the Newsfeed. I prefer the Most Recent sort.  So naturally I end up changing the setting back to Most Recent a few times a week. Lately, even while sorted by Most Recent, I am seeing older status updates and photos pop-up my Newsfeed. They have a recent comment added to them.

Even worse, some of these status updates and photos are by friends of friends. Because we are not friends and they only allow friends to comment, I can see their content my friends like but not interact with it. This was odd with the Ticker. Over half the entries I saw were from friends interacting with people I do not have as a friend. These stories by non-friends appeared in the Newsfeed at the same time I hid the Ticker, which suggests the activity is Facebook trying to get around my attempts to ignore.

There is a sweet spot in the morass that is Facebook privacy where some non-friends allow Facebook to share their posts with me. It feels like they have no understanding where their content is going. Facebook should work harder to help users understand the effect of the privacy choices they make. The alternative is the Myspace Effect where people feel there is creepy sense of not knowing who is seeing what and migrating away from the service.