Twitter users mock 'Quit Facebook' campaign
Last Updated: Monday, May 31, 2010 | 6:52 PM ET
CBC News
"Quit Facebook" was a trending topic on Twitter on Monday as more than 31,000 users said they were ready to abandon the popular social networking site over privacy concerns.
But plenty more of the site's more than 400 million users aren't going anywhere. Much of the "Quit Facebook" chatter on Twitter ridiculed the campaign, with repeated tweets that said: "Today is 'Quit Facebook day' … Tomorrow is 'Oh shit I deleted my Facebook' day … And Wednesday is 'Create Facebook day.'"
"Should I quit Facebook?" tweeted cursortavi. "Decisions, decisions, I think, I will have to update my Facebook status with this and see what my friends think."
The campaign is the brainchild of Torontonians Joseph Dee and Matthew Milan, who launched QuitFacebookDay.com several weeks ago to announce their plans to leave the social networking site.
Dee and Milan say they are concerned about how the social networking site manages the personal data of its users — including 15 million in Canada.
"We just can't see Facebook's current direction being aligned with any positive future for the web, so we're leaving," Dee and Milan write on their website, which includes suggestions for alternatives to Facebook.
Milan said he never expected the idea would go viral and put a dent in Facebook's membership numbers. But he feels the process was a success, since it got people talking about the site's privacy policies and the consequences of putting personal information online.
As of mid-afternoon Monday, more than 31,000 people had pledged to quit Facebook for good.
The networking site has come under fire from several government privacy agencies around the world for the way it allows third parties to get access to users' personal information.
Canada's Office of the Privacy Commissioner has been leading the efforts with an investigation that found Facebook's information about privacy was often confusing or incomplete.
Privacy law violated
Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart said last year that some of the site's policies break federal privacy law.
"One of the biggest concerns we raised was the over-sharing of users' personal information with third-party developers who create popular Facebook applications such as games and quizzes," Stoddart said at the time.
Last week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the company will allow users to completely opt out of the Facebook platform, blocking third parties from viewing their personal data.
He also promised to simplify the site's privacy settings by allowing users to go to one single page to decide who sees their information.
With files from The Canadian PressShare Tools
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