After listening to Mark Pesce’s controversial keynote presentation at LinuxConf Australia 2011 (and giving myself a couple of months to think about it), I’ve decided that the time has come to leave Facebook, and to encourage others to do the same. If you want to understand why, I strongly recommend you read Mark’s presentation but here are the reasons in a nutshell.
The most valuable piece of information about you is your social graph and the communication that occurs across that graph. That reveals more about you, your personal interests, even your secrets, than anything else that you do online. And Facebook is watching and recording it all.
This might not be so disturbing if Facebook had not repeatedly let members down with regards to the privacy of their data. Or if people actually understood what information they are divulging to Facebook. Whilst many have pointed to the likes of Microsoft and Google as potential dystopian “big brother” overlords, Facebook is probably much better poised in reality.
So I’m making my own (sadly insignificant) stand by quitting. I encourage you to do the same.
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Copyright ©Craig Aspinall 2011