I’ve had a lot of people ask me why I quit Facebook last week. The short answer is that I can no longer be part of what Noam Chomsky calls the bewildered herd. More and more I couldn’t agree with what was going on, so I took a stand. I quit Facebook and I do not plan on going back. Read my reasons and decide for yourself if this is something you can continue to go along with. If you choose to just ignore this and go about your day, that’s fine, but remember what Chomsky would say about you.
Facebook has turned into a total privacy nightmare. What’s worse is that privacy has disappeared as Facebook’s market share has increased. Boing Boing shows a brief timeline of how this has happened. I’ve added the image below.
As Facebook’s power has grown, so has their disregard for privacy. Definitely a disturbing trend. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg had to settle a huge lawsuit surrounding accusations of ripping off the idea from fellow Harvard students he ripped off. I won’t get into the details around the lawsuit, but there is information out there if you are curious.
Recently a college friend of Zuckerberg’s released instant messages to Business Insider. Below are some of the messages, keep in mind this was when he was a poor college student running a web site out of his dorm room. Now his net worth is estimated to be in the neighborhood of five billion dollars.
Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask.
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How’d you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don’t know why.
Zuck: They “trust me”
Zuck: Dumb fucks.
Not the best track record so far, but how about some more specifics about these privacy “changes” as Facebook is calling them. A blogger named Matt McKeon came up with a great animation to show the growing availability of personal information. You can see the progression on his blog, below are images showing the difference between 2005 and 2010.
Facebook today isn’t what I signed up for back in 2005. I understand that you should take precautions putting information online assuming it will be private, but this is ridiculous. My problem is less with the erosion of privacy and more with Facebook’s approach. Instead of making all of this sharing and instant personalization (previous post on this alarming “feature”) features users can opt-in to, they have made it so there are choices buried within the options allowing you to opt-out. That is, if you actually know Facebook has changed the options. With each major update, they routinely attempt to reset user’s options to the defaults. No surprise here, but the defaults involve everything being public.
Just how confusing have these options become? The New York Times has a great interactive feature highlighting the complexity. Some of the interesting highlights include Facebook’s privacy policy being longer than the U.S. Constitution and the tidbit that even if you have made your account totally private, your friends can still share all of your information with others.
Facebook has had a ton of security exploits. Most recently, users were able to witness live chat between other members without their knowledge. Another security issue resulted in private messages being randomly send to different users. What would you say if your e-mail account did this one day? It’s also now in the top ten of most target sites for phishing according to Mashable.
What about Google and all the other companies we are sharing all of our information with? It’s easy. None of those groups are basing entire business plans around making all of your information public. None of those companies have a track record of screwing people over. None of those companies have had privacy violations anywhere close to the scope of those made by Facebook. Google is quickly emerging as the largest rival to Facebook. Google represents the open, transparent web, while Facebook wants a closed system they control.
Think about everything that has been said here so far about Facebook. Here is a quick story about Google for comparison. Google’s company motto is “do no evil.” The Chinese government hacked into gmail to find out information about known political dissidents. Google decided this was the final straw and stopped censoring search results in China even though the popular search engine is now blocked by the great firewall of China as a result. The Google founders decided standing up for what they believed in was more important than becoming a major player in a market worth billions. What would Zuckerberg have done in this situation? It’s ok to share information on the internet, it’s the future of the web, just be careful who you share it with.
The bottom line is that Facebook has gone too far and have done absolutely nothing which would make me believe they are suddenly going to do otherwise. You have a choice, by doing nothing you have made one.
I’ve deleted all applications, switched nearly every privacy setting to Friend’s Only, and literally just check photos on Facebook and move on to the next site. And even that page looks jacked up on my browser for some reason.
I’m over Facebook and it seems I keep it only so my parents don’t ask me, “Why haven’t you been on Facebook?”
Something else I could have mentioned is that it no longer has much utility in my life. I have contact information for everyone I want to keep in touch with and anyone who knows me well and wants to get in touch knows how to find me.
He has some good points in the blog post. Even with you keeping a watch on your privacy settings you can still have your information shared by your “friends.”
Sad but true.
That is the most alarming part to me – that my friends can still share my information to third parties.
Alarming because most people are unaware of this happening.
No one even posts good pictures anymore, most people have ratcheted down their settings and keep pictures to themselves.
What do you define as “good” pictures? I think I know what you mean and I see where you’re coming from.
Now there is this story about the movie adaptation of Accidental Billionaires:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article7127721.ece
Very interesting story.
That movie will be good. David Fincher is directing last I heard.
David Fincher is a good choice to do a fighting the man type of movie, he did a great job with Fight Club. I’m not so sure about some of the casting choices. Justin Timberlake? Really?
Zuck gets a bad rap, that’s for sure. He is still a kid, he turned 26 this past weekend. That doesn’t excuse some of the decisions he has made, but it helps explain them.
Maybe he will eventually be like Bill Gates. He will use all the money he ripped off from people to try to make the world a better place and ease his conscience at the same time.
Harsh!
I love you man!
Thanks!
I think you are right about facebook. If I ignore it – will it go away?
If you ignore it, it will not go away.
It’s like that Rush song:
“If you choose not too decide you still have made a choice.”
Classic Rush!
Now there is a movement to get people to quit facebook completely.
http://quitfacebookday.com
Right now only 2500 people have signed up, facebook wouldn’t even notice those people quitting. They have almost 400 million users. Tens of thousands are joining every day. I wonder how close they are getting to saturating the market? Aren’t there only one billion internet users in the first place?
I signed up, but I don’t think it will make a difference.
Unfortunately I don’t see this going anywhere.
Anyone else find the irony that this page has a button at the bottom to share on fb?
Only a little ironic, I like the buttons that show numbers, gives you an idea of how many actually shared it.
Facebook can bring a lot of traffic. There are also share buttons for services like Fark and StumbleUpon which I don’t use.
http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/05/14/your-public-facebook-status-updates-now-publicly-searchable-outside-facebook/
Apparently fb status updates are all now available to be searched publicly, even if you don’t have an account.
Disturbing, very disturbing.
http://valleywag.gawker.com/5538216/facebook-ceo-slammed-dumb-users-who-trusted-him-in-college
Best picture of Zuck ever, lolz.
Hilarious picture. There are ton of less than glamorous photos of him floating around on the internet. A bunch of them got out when, ironically, he moved his profile from private to public. He has sense switched it back to more private options.
A view from the other side …
“Yes, Facebook Broke Your Trust, and Yes, That’s a Good Thing” http://bit.ly/al2YvA
I get what you’re sayin’ Kyle and this guy makes some good points as well.
JH
Looks like a good article, I’ll definitely read it when I have time tomorrow.
Never hurts to hear dissenting opinions.
Shit welcome to the party. I quit a while back and every one thought I had gone off the deep end. I did quit for a couple of other various reasons, but privacy and the direction of Facebook has been bothering me a good while. Before I quit, I saved all of the photos I wanted that I could no longer find on my HD, and got everyone’s contact info.
I returned to FB about 5 months after quitting, and I still don’t use it other than the emails for people’s Birthdays, and the occasional contact with people who refuse contact by any other means. Even when I have plenty of other ways to contact them. Now that you have to opt-in to all of this stuff just to show your interests and hobbies and stuff that is now all liked out side of facebook, I decided not to opt in to that ridiculousness so now my profile is pretty much blank. Whats the point of keeping it? I’m pretty much ready to leave again.
Reliance on Facebook is pretty much shit. I see some value in social networking but Facebook has pretty much debased the way we interact publicly and privately with people. Stalking, bullying, the incessant need to know everything going on in someones life – without ever actually asking yourself, its sad. I want slap the crap out of the next person, who in a face-to-face conversation, asks me if I recently saw their facebook update, or recent pictures additions. What happened to real conversational skills?
hell yeah by god
http://gawker.com/5541830/is-facebooks-ceo-silencing-criticism
They’re disabling accounts of people who speak up, if you didn’t quit they probably would have forced you to for writing this.
It continues…
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