Facebook punishment if you forget a birthday

Yesterday I turned 30. Yuck. It’s all fun and games with birthdays until you get to the point where you wake up and random body parts inexplicably hurt and you can’t eat Taco Bell without physically and emotionally preparing yourself. This is 30 and I can’t tell if it’s fun yet.

I digress. My birthday was super relaxing. I slept for like 12 hours, got to visit my parents, and ate at a nice restaurant with them plus a close family friend. I also went to bed at a reasonable hour, which is rare for me these days.

Some people forgot my birthday. At this point, I’m surprised when people remember, as I don’t post on Facebook or Instagram much at all anymore. However, it appears that there is a small but a small loyal bunch who will wish me an automated happy birthday for the rest of my life on LinkedIn. We love to see it.

How might we incentivize more people to remember their friend’s birthdays? Immediately, I thought of the Facebook birthday feature. Some people respond to negative feedback, so what if when you forgot a birthday, your account was locked until you did something about it?

I can almost guarantee this would make the majority of Facebook users 1) delete the app 2) remember birthdays more often or 3) reduce the number of friends they have.

Since 2 of these 3 options are a net negative for Meta, I doubt they’d build this, but it’d be funny to watch if they did.

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