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Leaving social network
Quit
Facebook Day
Lack
of privacy issues on Facebook caused thousands of people to commit quitting this
social network. The number of those who support Quit Facebook Day campaign rises
on a daily base, although Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed new privacy
control settings
By MARIJA STOJANOVIĆ
from Belgrade, SERBIA
 Matthew
Milan and Joseph Dee were the initiators of the campaign Quit
Facebook Day. This site went online on May 12. The biggest accusation
is that on May 2010, users had access to private information in the accounts of
their friends on Facebook. Also, it states that this social network does not give
you fair choices for managing your personal data and, by doing so, makes it difficult
for average user to protect it. The privacy issues are just part of a bigger
problem, according to the supporters of Quit Facebook campaign. May 31, was
marked as a Day for quitting. Until June 4, 36192 people committed to quit
Facebook on this site, and this number is rising every day.
Constantly
adding new features, privacy controls on Facebook became very complicated for
everyday user. According to The
New York Times, Facebook's privacy policy contains 5,830 words
and it is longer than the United States Constitution that has 4,543 words.
In addition, bad managing settings allowed some applications like Farm Ville and
other similar to have access to personal information. It turned out that users
could open either all of the applications, and expose their personal data, or
none of them.
The Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced adequate
solution in a few weeks after the initial problem. The new control settings offer
possibilities: you can share your information with "friends only",
"friends of friends" or with everyone on the social network. However,
there is a "recommended" version, which allows you to share some information,
like family information with everyone, but phone number and address with friends
only. On the other hand, you can customize your settings and choose which information
can be visible to whom.
The social
web gives you the great power to share numerous content with other people. On
the other hand, accumulating friends on these social networks may as well reflect
our inner desire to present ourselves to other people as popular and good friends.
 According
to The
Guardian several consumer groups contacted formally the Federal Trade
Commission, and chair of the House Judiciary Committee John Conyers Jr wrote to
chief executive Mark Zuckerberg asking for clarification on the site's privacy
practices.
Another accusation was that Facebook is selling personal
information of its users to advertisers. Zuckerberg, who explained that they
are personally searching the correspondent demographic group for adverts, dismissed
this.
Professional view
Quit Facebook site suggests other
social networks to replace Facebook. But, offering other social network as
a solution to the problem of addictiveness is not a good solution. Not only should
you try to limit information you are sharing on the social networks, you should
try to limit your time spent on the Internet also. Consequences can be numerous.
Vladeta
Radović, professor on the Faculty of Phylosophy in Nią, explained that there
are pros and contras of using social networks and Internet. "It is true that
Internet gives us many possibilities. It is specially important that we can exchange
ideas on the Internet and, yet, preserve our cultural differences. On the other
hand, people, while using Internet tend to alienate from others. Problems appear
when we substitute reality with virtual world. Internet as well as social
networks can provide many options but we have to be careful about the time spent
on-line. We live in a world of information, and you can not run away from the
progress but you have to learn to accept it in a right way."
How
will the story end?
Facebook was founded in 2004 by a Harvard sophomore,
Mark Zuckerberg. It was designed to connect Harvard students. Over time, it evolved
into a large and very popular social network. According to the
statistic there are more than 400 million active Facebook users across
the world, and about 70% of them are not from the United States. Also, people
spend approximately over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook.
However,
about 40,000 people who quit Facebook make just 0,01% of the number of people
who are still using it. Nevertheless, if discontent continues to grow, Facebook
creators would have to find better way to deal with it if they want to keep the
title "largest social network in the world".
(Published: 12.06.2010.)
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