Facebook Exodus
By Alissa Wilkinson Posted in Blog on September 3, 2009 0 Comments 1 min read
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From the New York Times: Facebook Exodus.

The exodus is not evident from the site’s overall numbers. According to comScore, Facebook attracted 87.7 million unique visitors in the United States in July. But while people are still joining Facebook and compulsively visiting the site, a small but noticeable group are fleeing – some of them ostentatiously.

Leif Harmsen, once a Facebook user, now crusades against it. Having dismissed his mother’s snap judgment of the site (“Facebook is the devil”), Harmsen now passionately agrees. He says, not entirely in jest, that he considers it a repressive regime akin to North Korea, and sells T-shirts with the words “Shut Your Facebook.” What especially galls him is the commercialization and corporate regulation of personal and social life. As Facebook endeavors to be the Web’s headquarters – to compete with Google, in other words, and to make money from the information it gathers – it’s inevitable that some people would come to view it as Big Brother.

Facebook privacy Technology


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