I’ve had it! I’ve deactivated my account. Today was simply the final straw with Facebook.
Ever since last November, I have been seriously upset with the business direction at Facebook. First they decided they would unilaterally include my name in all search results. Next they decided that my name, friends, pages and profile picture were publicly available information. Then they decided that all my Facebook actions and profile changes were automatically going into my profile stream and I had to opt-out and remove these from appearing. Today, they decided that my interests, work history, and other personal information were going to be public “connections”. It was too much.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/facebook-timeline
As Director of Security Research for IBM, I like to think I know a little bit about privacy and security. Privacy is about control. It fundamentally allows the user the choice over whether information is made public or not. There is no question that Facebook is slowly (rapidly?) moving in a direction where everything is to be made public to everyone and a fundamental tenant of privacy, control, is compromised. It’s with regret that I deactivate my account because I did use this as a means to keep up with my family – especially my very communicative sisters. 🙂
“Ironic isn’t it, that you post this information on a completely public blog,” you say. It’s completely different. I know this is public. I’ve had a public website since 1996. I post what I want people to see. I have the ultimate control. OK … I’m done with my soapbox. Goodbye Facebook.