Facebook Protest June 6th 2010

Gone are the days when Facebook was a place where you could interact with your friends and family online – useful for someone like me, whose friends and family are dotted around the globe.

Briefly, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg says he doesn’t “believe in privacy” and calls FB users “dumb fucks” for thinking our privacy was protected when it most certainly is not and privacy settings are notoriously difficult to navigate.

Personally, Facebook really pissed me off recently when it prompted me to make a Hobson’s Choice: either make all my favourite music/ TV shows/ films/ books into FB Pages (thereby making all my interests publicly available to anyone on the internet) or delete that information. To me, it was a no-brainer: I deleted all that info, and more.

Over the past year, we’ve seen FB change its privacy policy and layout multiple times. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to stay on top of these changes – I am fiercely protective of my privacy so don’t use my real name on FB, but I still periodically check my privacy settings. On one occasion I found a new privacy option whose default setting was [share with] Everyone – this was at least a week before FB made an announcement – by which time the damage had been done for a lot of people…

So the question is, what can we do? Well, there’s a wealth of information out there, and I’ve compiled some helpful links.

Independent Articles on Facebook’s Privacy Policy
May 2010 has seen a glut of news articles reporting on the problems with FB’s latest changes to their privacy policy. The New York Times states “To manage your privacy on Facebook, you will need to navigate through 50 settings with more than 170 options.” Can I just say, WTF??!!

Click the links below to read more about this and how it affects you:

Facebook Protest
If you do nothing else, check out FacebookProtest. On June 6th there will be a grassroots protest where we, the users, do not log in or interact with FB in any way, starting the evening of June 5th. Together we can show FB’s Powers That Be that they have to listen to us:

Your Open Book
Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life. Whether you want to or not
Check out the facts at YourOpenBook – and be sure to click the green “Learn Why This is Bad” button at top right: you’ll be taken to a page which lists far more links than I can on this blog. Worth singling out, however, are ReclaimPrivacy.org, which offers a tool to see how private your FB profile is and stats for cynics at the bottom of the page…

Jumping Ship
I’ve already decided that as soon as there’s a viable alternative to Facebook, I’m jumping ship.
Four NYU students are planning on launching Diaspora later this year – in the meantime you can also follow them on Twitter.