Facebook account deactivated today

Well, today is the day.

As much as I love Facebook, and enjoy the ability to keep in contact with family and friends easily, I have deactivated my account today in protest of their stance on privacy and the apparent lack of concern for their users by changing to the opposite stance on user privacy. It has been one step, after another over the last year or so. Desensitizing users to the changes they have made by doing it slowly.

Facebook sees dollar signs where we users are concerned. They have deluded themselves into thinking that with all the family and/friends connectios, and simplicity of keeping in contact with our Facebook friends, that we won’t be able to stop, that we are now hooked…”we have you now” in Darth Vader’s voice.

Is it true?

Not in my case at least. I let my friends and family know what I was doing. They support and understand. Will any of them do the same thing? I hope so…

We need to stand together to disallow Facebook a pass on the changes from supposed concern for users and user’s security and privacy to what it is today … where they are saying we don’t care about privacy by default. That we only see the connections we can make to other sites?!?! Facebook is saying proudly that they are the next MySpace … “now we control all these users and connections, and you as users have no privacy. Privacy is dead.”

Can we prove them wrong?

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Edit: added some links to help make your decision:

With Facebook’s security and privacy standards under fire from all sides, suffice it to say that this is not a good time for one of the company’s investors to fall for a Facebook phishing scam. (Facebook phishing scam snares company board member – CNET – May 10, 2010 8:42 AM PDT )

Comparing Facebook’s latest product modifications to deadly natural disasters is probably a little bit inappropriate, but the psychological reaction doesn’t seem all that different. The social network modified its policies for handling user data once again as part of its F8 conference and release of the Open Graph API, and ever since it became clear that more information is being set as public by default and more is being shared with third parties, concerned Facebook users have been on jittery alert, perhaps prone to overreaction, concerned that something even bigger may be about to change. (Understanding Facebook’s privacy aftershocks – CNET May 6, 2010 3:51 PM PDT)

Criticism of Facebook (Wikipedia.com)

Four senators are adding their voices to criticism that Facebook Inc. doesn’t do enough to give its 400 million users easier ways to protect their privacy online. (Senators turn up the heat on Facebook privacy issues – SFGATE.com – April 28, 2010)

More links on my blog post, Bye, Bye, Facebook, Bye, Bye… AND ALL OVER THE WEB! Just do a search on facebook privacy issues on any search engine and read it and weep.