DELETE FACEBOOK ON 12-21-2012
Join us ... Be part of history. Delete your Facebook account on December 21, 2012. We believe millions of users will join us and delete their Facebook accounts on 12-21-2012. This is a day predicted to bring about profound change. Part of this change will be the end of Facebook. Share this information with your friends. Together we will change the world! There is strength in numbers.
Here are 10 good reasons why you should join us and delete your facebook account on 12-21-2012 ...
10. Facebook's Terms Of Service are completely one-sided. Let's start with the basics. Facebook's Terms Of Service state that not only do they own your data (section 2.1), but if you don't keep it up to date and accurate (section 4.6), they can terminate your account (section 14). You could argue that the terms are just protecting Facebook's interests, and are not in practice enforced, but in the context of their other activities, this defense is pretty weak. As you'll see, there's no reason to give them the benefit of the doubt. Essentially, they see their customers as unpaid employees for crowd-sourcing ad-targeting data.
9. Facebook's CEO has a documented history of unethical behavior. From the very beginning of Facebook's existence, there are questions about Zuckerberg's ethics. According to BusinessInsider.com, he used Facebook user data to guess email passwords and read personal email in order to discredit his rivals. These allegations, albeit unproven and somewhat dated, nonetheless raise troubling questions about the ethics of the CEO of the world's largest social network. They're particularly compelling given that Facebook chose to fork over $65M to settle a related lawsuit alleging that Zuckerberg had actually stolen the idea for Facebook.
8. Facebook has flat out declared war on privacy. Founder and CEO of Facebook, in defense of Facebook's privacy changes last January: "People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time." More recently, in introducing the Open Graph API: "... the default is now social." Essentially, this means Facebook not only wants to know everything about you, and own that data, but to make it available to everybody. Which would not, by itself, necessarily be unethical, except that ...
7. Facebook is pulling a classic bait-and-switch. At the same time that they're telling developers how to access your data with new APIs, they are relatively quiet about explaining the implications of that to members. What this amounts to is a bait-and-switch. Facebook gets you to share information that you might not otherwise share, and then they make it publicly available. Since they are in the business of monetizing information about you for advertising purposes, this amounts to tricking their users into giving advertisers information about themselves. This is why Facebook is so much worse than Twitter in this regard: Twitter has made only the simplest (and thus, more credible) privacy claims and their customers know up front that all their tweets are public. It's also why the FTC is getting involved, and people are suing them (and winning).
6. Facebook is a bully. When Pete Warden demonstrated just how this bait-and-switch works (by crawling all the data that Facebook's privacy settings changes had inadvertently made public) they sued him. Keep in mind, this happened just before they announced the Open Graph API and stated that the "default is now social." So why sue an independent software developer and fledgling entrepreneur for making data publicly available when you're actually already planning to do that yourself? Their real agenda is pretty clear: they don't want their membership to know how much data is really available. It's one thing to talk to developers about how great all this sharing is going to be; quite another to actually see what that means in the form of files anyone can download and load into MatLab.
5. Even your private data is shared with applications. At this point, all your data is shared with applications that you install. Which means now you're not only trusting Facebook, but the application developers, too, many of whom are too small to worry much about keeping your data secure. And some of whom might be even more ethically challenged than Facebook. In practice, what this means is that all your data - all of it - must be effectively considered public, unless you simply never use any Facebook applications at all. Coupled with the OpenGraph API, you are no longer trusting Facebook, but the Facebook ecosystem.
4. Facebook is not technically competent enough to be trusted. Even if we weren't talking about ethical issues here, I can't trust Facebook's technical competence to make sure my data isn't hijacked. For example, their recent introduction of their "Like" button makes it rather easy for spammers to gain access to my feed and spam my social network. Or how about this gem for harvesting profile data? These are just the latest of a series of Keystone Kops mistakes, such as accidentally making users' profiles completely public, or the cross-site scripting hole that took them over two weeks to fix. They either don't care too much about your privacy or don't really have very good engineers, or perhaps both.
3. Facebook makes it incredibly difficult to truly delete your account. It's one thing to make data public or even mislead users about doing so; but where I really draw the line is that, once you decide you've had enough, it's pretty tricky to really delete your account. They make no promises about deleting your data and every application you've used may keep it as well. On top of that, account deletion is incredibly (and intentionally) confusing. When you go to your account settings, you're given an option to deactivate your account, which turns out not to be the same thing as deleting it. Deactivating means you can still be tagged in photos and be spammed by Facebook (you actually have to opt out of getting emails as part of the deactivation, an incredibly easy detail to overlook, since you think you're deleting your account). Finally, the moment you log back in, you're back like nothing ever happened! In fact, it's really not much different from not logging in for awhile. To actually delete your account, you have to find a link buried in the on-line help (by "buried" I mean it takes five clicks to get there). Or you can just click here. Basically, Facebook is trying to trick their users into allowing them to keep their data even after they've "deleted" their account.
2. Facebook doesn't (really) support the Open Web. The so-called Open Graph API is named so as to disguise its fundamentally closed nature. It's bad enough that the idea here is that we all pitch in and make it easier than ever to help Facebook collect more data about you. It's bad enough that most consumers will have no idea that this data is basically public. It's bad enough that they claim to own this data and are aiming to be the one source for accessing it. But then they are disingenuous enough to call it "open," when, in fact, it is completely proprietary to Facebook. You can't use this feature unless you're on Facebook. A truly open implementation would work with whichever social network we prefer, and it would look something like OpenLike. Similarly, they implement just enough of OpenID to claim they support it, while aggressively promoting a proprietary alternative, Facebook Connect.
1. The Facebook application itself sucks. Between the farms and the mafia wars and the "top news" (which always guesses wrong - is that configurable somehow?) and the myriad privacy settings and the annoying ads (with all that data about me, the best they can apparently do is promote dating sites, because, uh, I'm single) and the thousands upon thousands of crappy applications, Facebook is almost completely useless to me at this point. Yes, I could probably customize it better, but the navigation is ridiculous, so I don't bother. (And, yet, somehow, I can't even change colors or apply themes or do anything to make my page look personalized.) Let's not even get into how slowly your feed page loads. Basically, at this point, Facebook is more annoying than anything else.
Facebook is clearly determined to add every feature of every competing social network in an attempt to take over the Web (this is a never-ending quest that goes back to AOL and those damn CDs that were practically falling out of the sky). While Twitter isn't the most usable thing in the world, at least they've tried to stay focused and aren't trying to be everything to everyone.
I often hear people talking about Facebook as though they were some sort of monopoly or public trust. Well, they aren't. They owe us nothing. They can do whatever they want, within the bounds of the laws. (And keep in mind, even those criteria are pretty murky when it comes to social networking.) But that doesn't mean we have to actually put up with them. Furthermore, their long-term success is by no means guaranteed - have we all forgotten MySpace? Oh, right, we have. Regardless of the hype, the fact remains that Sergei Brin or Bill Gates or Warren Buffett could personally acquire a majority stake in Facebook without even straining their bank account. And Facebook's revenue remains more or less a rounding error for more established tech companies.
While social networking is a fun new application category enjoying remarkable growth, Facebook isn't the only game in town. I don't like their application nor how they do business and so I've made my choice to use other providers. And so can you.
[ 10 Reasons credit to Dan Yoder of Business Insider ]
Thanks for stopping by,
Judy Bagawaffle ^_^ ... [ look me up on youtube ] [ please tell your friends to check out our pages ] ...
**********************************************************************************************************
LOOK ... Want More Reasons ... Look Below ....
Privacy Concerns Cause More Users To Delete Facebook Accounts
If you would like to delete your Facebook, join the crowd. Facebook started a new feature that gave personal details to not only just friends, but the whole internet in April. Individuals appear to be more concerned about Facebook privacy issues and what Facebook is doing with their personal information. Privacy advocates, politicians and web superstars are publicly announcing they are deleting their Facebook accounts.
Individuals deleting Facebook accounts for privacy reasons
Unless they block it manually, personal information is now fair game, so people are deleting their Facebook accounts. Blogger Mat McKeon reports that when Facebook was founded, way back in 2005, it restricted all of the user’s personal information to just their friends and network. Over the past couple of years, the default Facebook privacy settings for a user’s personal details have become as permissive as same day paydayloans. Now anything but your contact data and birthday could be accessed by anyone. Users think it is confusing how Facebook also keeps changing what is classified as personal information.
Make sure to update your Facebook privacy settings
McKeon is not deleting his Facebook account or suggesting anybody else should. He understood Facebook trying to making money off the info that it gets when providing a free service. But he strongly advocates double and triple checking your privacy settings for a personal profile that could be revealing every little thing from where you live to the movies you like and also the people you trust. The Wall Street Journal reports that some high-profile members of the tech community, like Google search-engine guru Matt Cutts and Engadget co-founder Peter Rojas, have announced recently that they were planning on deactivating their Facebook accounts, a step that shuts down but doesn’t delete the Facebook account completely.
How do I delete my Facebook account forever?
Permanently deleting your Facebook account won’t be as simple as a click. It is easy to deactivate your account which will only hide your information temporarily. Apparently, as outlined by wikiHow, finding the "permanent delete" option is much harder.
Facebook privacy issues
A top Google search recently has been "delete Facebook account". After Facebook’s developer conference a few weeks ago, ABC News reports the latest backlash started brewing. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled several different changes he said would make the Web a lot more social and personalized by expanding Facebook’s presence to numerous other sites. On thousands of sites a "social plug-in" will now let users "like" content and see what their Facebook friends have liked, directly from those sites.
Facebook and privacy violations
Facebook now by default gives 3rd party companies access to members’ names, hobbies, and friends lists. When a Facebook user logs onto a site with the Facebook social plug-in, the content displayed is shaped by all of the personal details in their Facebook account, as well as any personal data of their friends. To disable this feature, a manual opt-out is needed.
Facebook privacy advocates
People upset about Facebook privacy policies have legislator on their side. "With great power comes great responsibility, and sites like Facebook have great responsibility," Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said at a news conference a week after Facebook’s announcements. "In my view, it ought to be the user who determines who gets what information, not Facebook." Schumer asked the Federal Trade Commission to create some guidelines for Facebook and other social networks to follow.
Numerous plan to delete Facebook account forever
Facebook hasn’t been adept at handling its latest public relations problem related to privacy. In a Q and A session with the New York Times this week Elliot Schrage, Facebook’s vice president for public policy, responded to all of the privacy concerns by saying that participating in Facebook is "a choice." He said "Please don’t share if you’re not comfortable.". That advice is being taken by many.
Sources for the article
Mat McKeon reports
http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/
Wall Street Journal reports
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/05/14/looking-to-delete-your-facebook-account-youre-not-alone/
http://mdomba.info/facebook/privacy-concerns-cause-more-users-to-delete-facebook-accounts/
Here are 10 good reasons why you should join us and delete your facebook account on 12-21-2012 ...
10. Facebook's Terms Of Service are completely one-sided. Let's start with the basics. Facebook's Terms Of Service state that not only do they own your data (section 2.1), but if you don't keep it up to date and accurate (section 4.6), they can terminate your account (section 14). You could argue that the terms are just protecting Facebook's interests, and are not in practice enforced, but in the context of their other activities, this defense is pretty weak. As you'll see, there's no reason to give them the benefit of the doubt. Essentially, they see their customers as unpaid employees for crowd-sourcing ad-targeting data.
9. Facebook's CEO has a documented history of unethical behavior. From the very beginning of Facebook's existence, there are questions about Zuckerberg's ethics. According to BusinessInsider.com, he used Facebook user data to guess email passwords and read personal email in order to discredit his rivals. These allegations, albeit unproven and somewhat dated, nonetheless raise troubling questions about the ethics of the CEO of the world's largest social network. They're particularly compelling given that Facebook chose to fork over $65M to settle a related lawsuit alleging that Zuckerberg had actually stolen the idea for Facebook.
8. Facebook has flat out declared war on privacy. Founder and CEO of Facebook, in defense of Facebook's privacy changes last January: "People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time." More recently, in introducing the Open Graph API: "... the default is now social." Essentially, this means Facebook not only wants to know everything about you, and own that data, but to make it available to everybody. Which would not, by itself, necessarily be unethical, except that ...
7. Facebook is pulling a classic bait-and-switch. At the same time that they're telling developers how to access your data with new APIs, they are relatively quiet about explaining the implications of that to members. What this amounts to is a bait-and-switch. Facebook gets you to share information that you might not otherwise share, and then they make it publicly available. Since they are in the business of monetizing information about you for advertising purposes, this amounts to tricking their users into giving advertisers information about themselves. This is why Facebook is so much worse than Twitter in this regard: Twitter has made only the simplest (and thus, more credible) privacy claims and their customers know up front that all their tweets are public. It's also why the FTC is getting involved, and people are suing them (and winning).
6. Facebook is a bully. When Pete Warden demonstrated just how this bait-and-switch works (by crawling all the data that Facebook's privacy settings changes had inadvertently made public) they sued him. Keep in mind, this happened just before they announced the Open Graph API and stated that the "default is now social." So why sue an independent software developer and fledgling entrepreneur for making data publicly available when you're actually already planning to do that yourself? Their real agenda is pretty clear: they don't want their membership to know how much data is really available. It's one thing to talk to developers about how great all this sharing is going to be; quite another to actually see what that means in the form of files anyone can download and load into MatLab.
5. Even your private data is shared with applications. At this point, all your data is shared with applications that you install. Which means now you're not only trusting Facebook, but the application developers, too, many of whom are too small to worry much about keeping your data secure. And some of whom might be even more ethically challenged than Facebook. In practice, what this means is that all your data - all of it - must be effectively considered public, unless you simply never use any Facebook applications at all. Coupled with the OpenGraph API, you are no longer trusting Facebook, but the Facebook ecosystem.
4. Facebook is not technically competent enough to be trusted. Even if we weren't talking about ethical issues here, I can't trust Facebook's technical competence to make sure my data isn't hijacked. For example, their recent introduction of their "Like" button makes it rather easy for spammers to gain access to my feed and spam my social network. Or how about this gem for harvesting profile data? These are just the latest of a series of Keystone Kops mistakes, such as accidentally making users' profiles completely public, or the cross-site scripting hole that took them over two weeks to fix. They either don't care too much about your privacy or don't really have very good engineers, or perhaps both.
3. Facebook makes it incredibly difficult to truly delete your account. It's one thing to make data public or even mislead users about doing so; but where I really draw the line is that, once you decide you've had enough, it's pretty tricky to really delete your account. They make no promises about deleting your data and every application you've used may keep it as well. On top of that, account deletion is incredibly (and intentionally) confusing. When you go to your account settings, you're given an option to deactivate your account, which turns out not to be the same thing as deleting it. Deactivating means you can still be tagged in photos and be spammed by Facebook (you actually have to opt out of getting emails as part of the deactivation, an incredibly easy detail to overlook, since you think you're deleting your account). Finally, the moment you log back in, you're back like nothing ever happened! In fact, it's really not much different from not logging in for awhile. To actually delete your account, you have to find a link buried in the on-line help (by "buried" I mean it takes five clicks to get there). Or you can just click here. Basically, Facebook is trying to trick their users into allowing them to keep their data even after they've "deleted" their account.
2. Facebook doesn't (really) support the Open Web. The so-called Open Graph API is named so as to disguise its fundamentally closed nature. It's bad enough that the idea here is that we all pitch in and make it easier than ever to help Facebook collect more data about you. It's bad enough that most consumers will have no idea that this data is basically public. It's bad enough that they claim to own this data and are aiming to be the one source for accessing it. But then they are disingenuous enough to call it "open," when, in fact, it is completely proprietary to Facebook. You can't use this feature unless you're on Facebook. A truly open implementation would work with whichever social network we prefer, and it would look something like OpenLike. Similarly, they implement just enough of OpenID to claim they support it, while aggressively promoting a proprietary alternative, Facebook Connect.
1. The Facebook application itself sucks. Between the farms and the mafia wars and the "top news" (which always guesses wrong - is that configurable somehow?) and the myriad privacy settings and the annoying ads (with all that data about me, the best they can apparently do is promote dating sites, because, uh, I'm single) and the thousands upon thousands of crappy applications, Facebook is almost completely useless to me at this point. Yes, I could probably customize it better, but the navigation is ridiculous, so I don't bother. (And, yet, somehow, I can't even change colors or apply themes or do anything to make my page look personalized.) Let's not even get into how slowly your feed page loads. Basically, at this point, Facebook is more annoying than anything else.
Facebook is clearly determined to add every feature of every competing social network in an attempt to take over the Web (this is a never-ending quest that goes back to AOL and those damn CDs that were practically falling out of the sky). While Twitter isn't the most usable thing in the world, at least they've tried to stay focused and aren't trying to be everything to everyone.
I often hear people talking about Facebook as though they were some sort of monopoly or public trust. Well, they aren't. They owe us nothing. They can do whatever they want, within the bounds of the laws. (And keep in mind, even those criteria are pretty murky when it comes to social networking.) But that doesn't mean we have to actually put up with them. Furthermore, their long-term success is by no means guaranteed - have we all forgotten MySpace? Oh, right, we have. Regardless of the hype, the fact remains that Sergei Brin or Bill Gates or Warren Buffett could personally acquire a majority stake in Facebook without even straining their bank account. And Facebook's revenue remains more or less a rounding error for more established tech companies.
While social networking is a fun new application category enjoying remarkable growth, Facebook isn't the only game in town. I don't like their application nor how they do business and so I've made my choice to use other providers. And so can you.
[ 10 Reasons credit to Dan Yoder of Business Insider ]
Thanks for stopping by,
Judy Bagawaffle ^_^ ... [ look me up on youtube ] [ please tell your friends to check out our pages ] ...
**********************************************************************************************************
LOOK ... Want More Reasons ... Look Below ....
Privacy Concerns Cause More Users To Delete Facebook Accounts
If you would like to delete your Facebook, join the crowd. Facebook started a new feature that gave personal details to not only just friends, but the whole internet in April. Individuals appear to be more concerned about Facebook privacy issues and what Facebook is doing with their personal information. Privacy advocates, politicians and web superstars are publicly announcing they are deleting their Facebook accounts.
Individuals deleting Facebook accounts for privacy reasons
Unless they block it manually, personal information is now fair game, so people are deleting their Facebook accounts. Blogger Mat McKeon reports that when Facebook was founded, way back in 2005, it restricted all of the user’s personal information to just their friends and network. Over the past couple of years, the default Facebook privacy settings for a user’s personal details have become as permissive as same day paydayloans. Now anything but your contact data and birthday could be accessed by anyone. Users think it is confusing how Facebook also keeps changing what is classified as personal information.
Make sure to update your Facebook privacy settings
McKeon is not deleting his Facebook account or suggesting anybody else should. He understood Facebook trying to making money off the info that it gets when providing a free service. But he strongly advocates double and triple checking your privacy settings for a personal profile that could be revealing every little thing from where you live to the movies you like and also the people you trust. The Wall Street Journal reports that some high-profile members of the tech community, like Google search-engine guru Matt Cutts and Engadget co-founder Peter Rojas, have announced recently that they were planning on deactivating their Facebook accounts, a step that shuts down but doesn’t delete the Facebook account completely.
How do I delete my Facebook account forever?
Permanently deleting your Facebook account won’t be as simple as a click. It is easy to deactivate your account which will only hide your information temporarily. Apparently, as outlined by wikiHow, finding the "permanent delete" option is much harder.
Facebook privacy issues
A top Google search recently has been "delete Facebook account". After Facebook’s developer conference a few weeks ago, ABC News reports the latest backlash started brewing. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled several different changes he said would make the Web a lot more social and personalized by expanding Facebook’s presence to numerous other sites. On thousands of sites a "social plug-in" will now let users "like" content and see what their Facebook friends have liked, directly from those sites.
Facebook and privacy violations
Facebook now by default gives 3rd party companies access to members’ names, hobbies, and friends lists. When a Facebook user logs onto a site with the Facebook social plug-in, the content displayed is shaped by all of the personal details in their Facebook account, as well as any personal data of their friends. To disable this feature, a manual opt-out is needed.
Facebook privacy advocates
People upset about Facebook privacy policies have legislator on their side. "With great power comes great responsibility, and sites like Facebook have great responsibility," Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said at a news conference a week after Facebook’s announcements. "In my view, it ought to be the user who determines who gets what information, not Facebook." Schumer asked the Federal Trade Commission to create some guidelines for Facebook and other social networks to follow.
Numerous plan to delete Facebook account forever
Facebook hasn’t been adept at handling its latest public relations problem related to privacy. In a Q and A session with the New York Times this week Elliot Schrage, Facebook’s vice president for public policy, responded to all of the privacy concerns by saying that participating in Facebook is "a choice." He said "Please don’t share if you’re not comfortable.". That advice is being taken by many.
Sources for the article
Mat McKeon reports
http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/
Wall Street Journal reports
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/05/14/looking-to-delete-your-facebook-account-youre-not-alone/
http://mdomba.info/facebook/privacy-concerns-cause-more-users-to-delete-facebook-accounts/
