Quit Facebook Day
Apparently, May 31st 2010 is Quit Facebook Day.
Exactly one week from today (Monday), over 14,000 people have pledged to quit Facebook in protest of their shady terms and conditions and violation of privacy.
Any regular user of FB has probably noticed the fairly consistent changes and revamps to the site, which also usually come with changes to the privacy policy. This includes having your Facebook page listed on Google, how much information can be seen by non-registered users and strangers, and what sites can ‘grab’ your interest keywords from your logged-in account and use it for their own website. For a full list of offenses against privacy FB has committed, you can read a pretty concise list here.
Many of us don’t see their privacy changes as a huge problem. For instance, my phone number and address isn’t anywhere on the site because I never put it in there. However it does link to all my family members, friends, and often statuses that say my location.
However a decisive day to end Facebook is extremely compelling to me. I’ve been contemplating the pros and cons (have you all noticed I love pros and cons?) of keeping my account and am still unsure.
Pro: FB is the absolute easiest and best way for me to keep in contact with friends I only see once and a while, cousins who live in other states, etc.
Con: FB is the absolute easiest and best way for people I don’t like to contact me.
Pro: FB is the perfect platform to start discussions with a wide variety of people with different views and morals, allowing a mix of all my friends and acquaintances to share ideas and viewpoints.
Con: FB is the perfect platform for people to spew uncredited, untrue misinformation to masses of people quickly and without discourse.
Pro: Though I read the news and have a Twitter, I do get a lot of information through Facebook, mostly friends and fanpages posting news links, happenings, events, etc.
Con: I could get almost all that same information through Twitter.
Pro: I can further get to know a person I otherwise have not.
Con: I find that I like many people less once I have them on Facebook. With the ease of information spreading, I tend to see the bad sides of many people and often hateful or ignorant views I wouldn’t have otherwise known about them. Likewise I’m sure many people have lost interest in being friends with me after learning my views on some things.
My main concern with having a personal account is that sometimes, its an overload of information to me. Life would be less distraction-filled without Facebook, but I’m not sure if I’m ready to give up the Pros along with the Cons yet.
Are any of you quitting Facebook at the end of the month?
If you aren’t, you can become a fan of me on Facebook!
If you are, you can follow me on Twitter!
The Sangfroid 
I don’t trust Facebook with my information. It’s unwilling or incapable to keep information private. And the fact that my information can be triangulated through friends and family is creepy and potentially dangerous.
Thanks for the link to Gizmodo’s article. I didn’t realize that deactivating and deleting your account are two different things and there are actions you should take beforehand to erase info. I went here:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=16929680703
I can’t decide whether to delete my account or not. I love how you show that same indecision by inviting me to follow you on Facebook if I don’t delete my account. Would I be a hypocrite if I deleted myself off and tried to keep my fan page?
Haha, yeah I don’t want to lose my fanpage but you can’t have one without a personal page!!
I won’t be quitting Facebook. They provide an excellent service, for free. I think that anyone who posts personal information anywhere online and expects some sort of privacy is being naive. If you put it online, you’re making it public, so deal with the consequences, or make smarter online choices. *stepping down off of soapbox*
Stick around – keep your FB, keep your fan page.. social media is excellent for promoting growth or community for blogs :)
everyone made me to go facebook cuz theyre not on myspace anymore… now that im finally on facebook, everyones going to twitter now… i’ll never keep up with the times.. i feel like kyle on southpark
Isn’t that the way? I’m constantly on the look out for what the next big social networking ‘thing’ will be but so far Twitter seems to be dominating.
I quit using facebook months ago and it was one of the best decisions of my life! I hated how I felt absolutely compelled to check my facebook constantly even though I really didn’t like anything about it. It was like a peer pressure kind of thing…everyone just expects everyone else to check it all day long to keep up with the bullshit statuses and dumb ass wall posts/picture comments.