It's in the design

Joshua Porter, a web designer/developer, researcher, and writer, looks at "Facebook’s Brilliant but Evil design":

What kills me about what Facebook is doing is how good the design is. At every step they’ve done things almost perfectly. They’ve pinpointed the motivations of users at each step, and designed the screens in such a way as to make the default action the seemingly best one. They technically give you the option to get out of it, but they have designed the system in such a way to make it much easier to simply let it happen.

If I was on the Facebook design team, I would be proud of this design. It is some of the best social design out there. But if that were the case, if I was on the design team, all of these design decisions would have happened over a long period of time. I wouldn’t have noticed how they’re starting to be evil.

Read more here.  (Hat tip: Chris.)