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"If there's ever a way to make Facebook into a drama, it's by adding a broken relationship to the scene.  There's nothing worse than having an ex as one of your Facebook friends, and sometimes, we can thank Facebook for leading us to the \"ex\" situation in the first place.  A British judge has recently ruled that being friends on Facebook does not mean you're actually friends, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.  Man, that's a downer.  Just when I was starting to get popular...\nThe related case was one in which a woman was accusing her ex-boyfriend of harassment, and cited that he was hounding her by way of sending her a Facebook friend request.  The report in the Herald doesn't mention any other ways in which the ex-boyfriend was harassing her, but from the sounds of it (as he was cleared of all charges), the friend request may be the only example she had.  The presiding judge ruled that contact through Facebook isn't actually defined as a friendship in the \"traditional sense.\"\nThere are a number of ways in which I could further discuss this matter\u2014delving into traditional versus new media (and its related concepts in the online and offline world), for instance.  But as silly as this all is, I can't help but think about the actual implications of an ex-boyfriend having access to a Facebook account.  Who wants that?  Some people would rather get rid of their entire Facebook account, real friends and all, than deal with an ex being able to see photo albums, shared notes, and friend updates.  \nYes, there are numerous privacy settings for accessing accounts, but you can't help but laugh at the irony of an ex likely having more access to personal information than say, stalking around a house and digging through trash.  Thanks to Facebook's increasingly automated processes for sharing information across one's social graph, Facebook can easily get you in a lot of trouble when it comes to relationships.  \nRemember that girl you met at the party last weekend, who proceeded to gift you smooches and a \"You're Hot\" application request?  Your girlfriend didn't really appreciate that, and you'll only get into more trouble if you limit her access to your news feed.  When it's all said and done, the ex factor is an entirely different story in terms of limiting access to your news feed.  And all the woman really had to do was reject her ex's friend request, and block him.  :P\n\nn\n{democracy:120}\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2008/03/28/facebook-friends/>