Monday marks Quit Facebook Day, Joseph Dee and Matthew Milan from Toronto launched quitfacebook.com a few weeks ago.
“For us it comes down to two things: fair choices and best intentions. In our view, Facebook doesn’t do a good job in either department,” the pair wrote on their site.
“Facebook gives you choices about how to manage your data, but they aren’t fair choices, and while the onus is on the individual to manage these choices, Facebook makes it damn difficult for the average user to understand or manage this. We also don’t think Facebook has much respect for you or your data, especially in the context of the future.” Users, governments and privacy agencies around the world have criticized Facebook for allowing third-party clients access to users’ personal information.
Canada’s privacy commissioner even headed up an investigation that found Facebook’s information about privacy was often confusing or incomplete.
The site announced last Wednesday it’s revamping its privacy settings to address concerns about how personal information is shared.
Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg said the site will be adding one privacy control setting through which users can choose with whom they share all of their content.
Nevertheless, as of Monday at noon, 28,849 people had pledged to quit the social networking giant. While that may seem like a lot, Facebook boasts 400 million users worldwide, and it’s constantly growing.
Foster, who lives in Toronto but originally hails from Ireland, says he didn’t even know it was Quit Facebook Day. He was just fed up with the service.
“I like keeping personal things personal, and I was finding it more and more difficult to do that. But it’s not only a privacy thing, it’s also the pressure to add family as “friends.” I’m sick of hearing what my numerous 10-year-old cousins are doing. And when you remove them, that’s just not good for a kid’s ego,” he said.
Quitting Facebook is no easy feat. If you go into your account settings and click “deactivate,” it doesn’t really get rid of your account. People can still tag you in pictures and invite you to events, and if you decide to log in again, everything will be restored.
To permanently delete your account, you have to find a link buried deep within the site’s “help” section. Even then, it takes 14 days to disappear, and Facebook reserves the right to keep some of your data.
Not only is it technically difficult to quit, but it carries a social stigma as well. It’s easy to lose touch with people, especially if, like Foster, you’re living far from home.
“This is a concern, but if people want to know what’s going on they can send me an e-mail. Or maybe write me a letter, but I doubt that’ll catch on,” he said. “There’s always Twitter, too.”
Source : torontosun.com
