Facebook Is Ruining your Excuse for Getting Out of Boring Invitations

"Ah, my phone never rang." "That email must have got caught up in my spam." "My texts have been playing up recently, it's really weird."

All complete lies, and all lines we've used at one time or another to explain why we didn't take that call, didn't reply to that email, and refused to acknowledge that text. And thank God they exist, otherwise we'd have all had to have dealt with something we really wanted to avoid.

Sadly, a fourth one - "I never saw that Facebook event invite" - is now going to be unavailable to us, as the social media giant is rolling out read receipts on events, to join the ones it has for its private messaging service. Now you can't look at an invite to see whether it's any good or not without the sender knowing.

Facebook has told the Daily Dot that it is “piloting the ability for private event hosts and guests to know whether their friends they invited have seen the event”​.

Now, if you take a quick peek, think 'no, I'm pretty sure I won't be going to that terrible party' and then get directly asked whether you're coming, you'll have no choice but to tell the truth if you want to get out of it. But you won't do that, you'll have to say 'yes! Looking forward to it!' and then waste a precious evening of your incredibly short time upon this earth with someone you don't really like.

Thanks Facebook. Thanks for everything.