Facebook

I’m not going to win any fans with my next post, but it’s something that I feel strongly about, so here goes.
It’s about Facebook.
There are some people out there who feel the same way I do about Facebook. They have started a movement…to quit facebook, and for everyone to follow suit on May 31st. You can check it out at www.quitfacebookday.com.
The problem?
Privacy.
Apparently, Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of facebook, has made some comments in a video that surfaced recently. I haven’t been able to find the video (but saw some portions of it on the news this morning). The bottom line was that he made comments that make you think he doesn’t care about privacy or the fact that personal information could be floating around the World Wide Web for all to use. Now, if the creator of Facebook doesn’t care about individual privacy, then what makes you think the site itself will protect your privacy? And that is the force behind the movement.
The web site claims that Facebook not only makes it hard for people to manage their privacy options (by making those options difficult to understand by the average user), it also changes those options regularly (sometimes daily) without informing the users. The onus then is on the user to continually monitor, manage, and update their privacy settings on their own.
I’ve never signed up for Facebook, and never felt the need to. Although, I have to admit, I have thought about it from time to time. But, each time I even consider signing up, some new story surfaces in the news about Facebook’s lack of privacy or viruses set to target Facebook users, and I inevitably stop myself.
Do I think this movement will be huge? No.
But, I can’t help but write about the stuff that I feel is important in life. And individual privacy is important to me. It bothers me that my purse and ID were stolen just over a month ago. And while they are most likely lying in a ditch somewhere, or at the bottom of a garbage bin, I can’t help but feel sick that they are “out” there. So, you can imagine why I’m not on Facebook, and never will be.