Facebook Quit Day = Fail. Yesterday, May 31, was the first ever organized effort for the masses to delete their Facebook account as a protest to the ever-changing privacy settings and overall domination of online social interaction. These “Quitters” wanted to make a statement that our lives can exist without the world of Facebook. For as much buzz as this event created, Facebook Quit Day was a huge flop.
Out of over 450 million active users, there were a mere 34,100 who committed to deleting their Facebook account yesterday. This proves more than ever that despite recent concerns with hackers and privacy settings, Facebook is here to stay.
The founders of Quit Facebook Day are Matthew Milan (@mmilan) and Joseph Dee (@josephdee) of Toronto, Canada. They created a site that allowed people to sign up declaring they would delete their Facebook account on May 31. This site even provided e-mail reminders for the day.
I will agree that there have been a lot of changes lately concerning Facebook privacy settings, but Facebook really isn’t to blame for personal information being made public. You are. If you don’t want your private information posted for the world to see, don’t put it there in the first place. If you want to keep personal information on Facebook for your friends and family to see, take a few minutes to customize your privacy settings. You can customize who views all your information from your wall posts to photo albums. You can even test your settings to view your profile as someone who is not your friend. All of this can be done in a matter of minutes.
If you are one of the 34,000 who deleted your account yesterday, more power to you (you will probably find yourself having lots of free time). As for me, I’ll keep mine.
TweetTags: Facebook, privacy, Social Media
