The person "throwing giants shit fits" is the one at fault, and the one that needs to reset their expectations at how communication works.
It's also not just an aloof principle - how often does someone who really matters message you on Facebook? You can afford to have friends and family get angry because you ignored them. It's not as if your boss will routinely ping you through informal means.
It seems like we are ever less capable establishing effective communication with other people, which leads to people trusting more and more for the machines to do all the interfacing for us. Instead of asking for more and more technology to hide our flaws, shouldn't we strive for this to be fixed at the social level?
Well, if you want less technology thrown, maybe we shouldn't have read receipts at all. But if we are to have them, allowing the user to control the experience doesn't seem too much to ask for. Why not just ask the user if he wants to send a receipt?
Instead of asking for more and more technology to hide our flaws, shouldn't we strive for this to be fixed at the social level?
I think that's an odd way to put the question. I'd rather ask if it's technology's job to enforce changes in the social dynamics, and if it's there to serve or mold the public.
Maybe this is a social problem and maybe we should fix it, but I'd rather not have Facebook making that decision for us.
Today you have someone mad at you because you don't respond to messages, tomorrow you'll have the same person saying things like "why don't I get read confirmations from you? I get from all of my other friends. Are you hiding something from me?"
> I'd rather ask if it's technology's job to enforce changes in the social dynamics
I'm not saying it is. At the same time, it's not technology's job to enforce that things stay static. However, we can't deny that technological progress causes changes in the environment, which requires adaptation from people. Call it "Sociological Darwinism", if you will.
This article hardly has to do with technology. What garbage from ars.
Read receipts really aren't this serious. They don't even warrant an entire article about the sociological implications of their implementation. It just says the other person got it, and read it. That's it. No mandates follow. Just have the personal fortitude to not respond when you don't want to respond, that should be second nature before you engage in social communication.
It's really not a big deal to ignore people. You shouldn't be afraid to just because of what they'll think. It's not your problem - it wasn't before this technology, and it won't be after the next innovation.