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The Great Facebook Exodus of 2010
Posted by: redsaid on May 19, 2010
Once upon a time, in the hallowed halls of Harvard University, a geeky looking, heartbroken boy of 19 became one of the founding fathers of what would turn out to be a virtual Promised Land…
In the ensuing years, many people would flock to that land to stake out a virtual dwelling there. But then the Promised Land started breaking some of its promises and slyly began exposing its inhabitants’ guarded secrets to preying eyes.
In recent days, that Promised Land, better known to most of us as the social networking site Facebook, has experienced a surging backlash against its convoluted “privacy” policy. When viewed closely, the policy actually displays Facebook’s blatant disregard for keeping the information of its 450 million members confidential.
This has inspired thousands of the social network’s members to join a group who will all delete their accounts and leave the site in protest at the end of the month.
According to the group’s website, 5 884 (and counting) Facebook users have already pledged to quit Facebook on the 31st of May 2010 – which has even been dubbed Quit Facebook Day.
Although it’s doubtful that the amount of committed quitters – whose absence will barely leave a dent in Facebook’s overall membership – will cause Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg to quake in his boots, the general backlash against the Facebook privacy policy has reportedly been substantial enough to turn some of his own company executives against him.
While some of Zuckerberg’s employees agree with his rather casual stance that the social network’s users should be more open with their information anyway, others have apparently realised how unwise it is to bite those very hands that keep you fed and your bank account inflated. But whether they will manage to override Zuckerberg and put more privacy controls back into the hands of Facebook’s members remain to be seen.
Either way, it may not be enough to persuade the committed quitters not to kill their accounts and still leave the site on the 31st. Apparently people are becoming really tired of being Zuckerberg’s suckers.
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