The trend is alarming though and just fortifies my perception of Facebook further. They're trying to make their cust..uh, I mean, products, behave the way they want instead of listening to what people want and how they want it. That's a classic bad move from any company. Since this is HN, wasn't success supposed to have a high correlation with "Make something people want" ?
Facebook's leverage is mostly based on their user base. As soon as there's at least one commonly used social network where I can find most of my friends, bye bye Facebook. That is a ridiculously hard problem to solve and Facebook know that. At the same time they're just using more and more of that leverage by trying to force things down on people's throats instead of adding to the pile of reasons why people would want to use Facebook. This makes it imperative that once something else, something even moderately bearable that is not Facebook, becomes available then people will be fleeing in masses.