Facebook's Places Kills the Little White Lie

Facebook's new Places feature (details here) is "sure to affect your relationships in amazing and awful ways," writes Farhad Manjoo for Slate. He focuses on one of the potentially awful ways, the one in which Facebook "becomes the honesty police, a social truth serum that will prevent you from casually lying to your friends, family, and co-workers about where you were."

While a deterrent to lying sounds good in theory, little white lies are sometimes social necessities. "But Facebook Places makes these fibs untenable," he writes. "Unless you stay at home all weekend hiding from everyone, someone will spot you and tag you, and your lie about missing the birthday dinner in order to hike the Appalachian Trail will backfire. The easiest thing to do, then, is to turn it off." (See how here.)