At a time when we’re sharing more and more on the web, Matt Buchanan wonders if deletion is the only way to privacy: http://nyr.kr/YkLXq0

MENLO PARK (The Borowitz Report)—Before a rapt audience at Facebook headquarters Thursday, Facebook C.E.O. Mark Zuckerberg unveiled new software that he promised “will totally change the way you are wasting your life.”

Explaining the development of Facebook’s new phone software, Home, Mr. Zuckerberg said, “Our research showed that Facebook users still had a few hours a day when they were leading somewhat healthy and productive lives. Our new software will change all of that.”

VATICAN CITY (The Borowitz Report)—The brave new world of social media torpedoed the chances of a leading papal candidate today, as a Dutch cardinal struggled to explain newly surfaced Facebook photos showing him on a 2007 spring-break romp in Tampa. Continue reading: http://nyr.kr/ZDjV5P

The new news feed, as beautiful and as smartly designed as it may be, does little to encourage fatigued users to fill it up with the photos and personal updates that they’ve ceased posting on Facebook, or promise them that it’ll be loaded with more of the kinds of “can’t miss” things that will keep them coming back. It lacks the grand ambition of Facebook’s last major products…

Matt Buchanan looks at Facebook’s new news feed: http://nyr.kr/YFgqg0

Are you on Facebook? If so, how will you use the new stream?

(Source: newyorker.com)

The Internet is perhaps the closest thing we’ll ever have to the ring of Gyges—the invisibility charm that allows its wearer to be alone while having access to the outside world—which Plato posited as the truest test of how a person will act when freed from accountability or restraint. We might not be doing anything evil, but we’re not doing anything we want the world to see…

Andrea DenHoed reflects on a friend’s fake Facebook wedding, and the gap we straddle between performance and secrecy: http://nyr.kr/WxvdX8

(Source: newyorker.com)

Shouts & Murmurs: What if Facebook were Yelp? “Terrific friend, would definitely recommend her….I’ve spent years going to Jane for conversation and drinks. She’s got a GREAT vibe and REALLY knows how to listen.” 

Cartoon by Harry Bliss. For more from this week’s issue: http://nyr.kr/RlF99m

Have a cartoonish question? Join cartoon editor Bob Mankoff in a live chat on Nipplegate and other matters, happening now: http://nyr.kr/PlES1x

In this week’s New Yorker Out Loud podcast, the magazine’s cartoon editor, Robert Mankoff, discusses the recent Nipplegate incident, in which a cartoon portraying Adam and Eve got the New Yorker temporarily banned from Facebook. Mankoff talks with Michael Agger and Mick Stevens, the cartoonist behind the offending cartoon, about the curious history of nipples in the magazine. Mankoff and Stevens also discuss the advantages of cartoon clichés like Adam and Eve, how cartoonists practice their art, and the evolution of the crash-test-dummy cartoon. Also, Peter Schjeldahl remembers Andy Warhol. Click-through to listen: http://nyr.kr/Rk0Iq0

The Exciting Conclusion of Nipplegate: http://nyr.kr/QYCpYP