Facebook just announced a soon to be implemented change to its service that is a double-edged sword which surely has the potential to polarize its users.
The big deal is about the Facebook Other folder, specifically because this feature(?) has been no big deal at all so far. Those who’ve never even seen it before (in the Desktop version, it’s in the messages tab next to Inbox, if you look carefully), as well as those who knew of it but never used it or used it very rarely are the crushing majority of Facebook users.
This happens because the Other folder is the place where all the messages from people who you are not friends with go. And the rationale behind it was that if you wanted to receive messages from those persons, you could always make them FB friends. If not, Facebook was protecting your privacy and helping you not get spammed by just any stranger by putting all such messages in a folder separate from your main (Inbox) one in which you chat.
However, the many real situations of out-of-touch or unknown relatives trying to contact each other, or those messages coming from people you just met at a party or business meeting yesterday or those from a helpful stranger trying to return something to you presented a genuine problem that sometimes meant missing out on opportunities you would have liked to seize.
Also problematic is that in the case of mobiles, which is how a large proportion of users access Facebook, the Other folder is not even integrated in the Messenger app or messenger tab of the original app.
So, the company decided to introduce a new level of “openness where you can get in touch with anyone in the world but still have the control yourself of who contacts you and who can’t.” And in the words of the head of Messenger, David Marcus, they plan to do that by replacing “privacy by obscurity” with “openness with control”.
In short, the Facebook Other folder will be replaced by a new feature called Message Requests, which presumably will act like the Friends Requests feature works, only for messages, by placing those coming from non-friends (meaning any of the ~1.5 billion FB users) in your Inbox pending your review.
From here, if you delete or ignore one such Message Request you will no longer see messages from that person in the future. FB will also factor in the sender’s previous messaging behavior and whether you typically approve Message Requests. And Facebook’s spam detection systems that flag recently created accounts with few friends will also be part of Message Requests’ safety measures.
