Posted on 09/01/2009 9:49:54 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. Facebook, the online social grid, could not command loyalty forever. If you ask around, as I did, you’ll find quitters. One person shut down her account because she disliked how nosy it made her. Another thought the scene had turned desperate. A third feared stalkers. A fourth believed his privacy was compromised. A fifth disappeared without a word.
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.
“The more dependent we allow ourselves to become to something like Facebook — and Facebook does everything in its power to make you more dependent — the more Facebook can and does abuse us,” Harmsen explained by indignant e-mail. “It is not ‘your’ Facebook profile. It is Facebook’s profile about you.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The article has no numbers on how many people are actually leaving Facebook, just some interviews with disgruntled former users.
There is no evidence that there is an actual exodus of facebook.
Otherwise, (putting on tin-foil hat here), this sudden NYT article seems as a desperate effort to derail Sarah Palin's great success in getting her message out to the world at large via FaceBook, otherwise why would the NYT suddenly deride this very popular website? Nothing they do happens in a bubble, there is a reason, always ....
(removing tin-foil hat and going to bed for tonight)
-- MM
No mention of facebook being being rescued from certain bankruptcy by a drug kingpin, though.
Facebook is good for keeping in touch ONCE IN A WHILE. I don't do anything that give my information out. All these polls, and surveys and What 1970's rockstar are you? type of crap just get more and more of your info. And it's a waste of time. Unlike FreeRepublic, of course!
I'm like you, I have a facebook page, just to have a potential way for people to contact me for whatever reason. I give out minimal personal information.
I'm not one of those technophobes either. I was online before there was widespread use of the internet (BBSes, Usenet), so I'm not some anti-tech curmudgeon. The thing with these types of social networking sites is that it seems to really brings out the narcissists.
“No mention of facebook being being rescued from certain bankruptcy by a drug kingpin, though.”
Got to have a secure way to get your coded illegal drug orders in to your Mexican and Columbian connections, doncha know...
bookmark
Ari....uuhhh, I think that link goes to your page.
yeah, no irony there !
Chat is one of the more annoying aspects of FB. But, you can set the chat option so it appears you are not online.
Obviously a Myspace plant trying to win people back. :)
Thanks.
I have a Facebook page and heard about those...won't even go there for the same reason I never tried drugs...:o)
I find a lot of Freepers on Facebook. I have also made contact with a lot of 70 Sci-Fi actors/actresses on Facebook.
I find Twitter and MySpace a complete waste of time. Facebook Forever baby.
Actually I prefer Myspace....matter of taste I guess but I have them all just the same...:o)
I also am reuniting with people I haven’t seen or talked to in over 37 (WOW) years!! Showing my age, aren’t I? I have stayed away from Farmville and Farmtown and all that. I also have not answered the flowers or the causes. I have to admit that I did succumb to “pass a round”. Just couldn’t help myself!
My husband thinks I am crazy but I don’t care...it’s fun to catch up with everyone and you never know who you will find or will find you next! I am still looking for two of my female cousins. Since I don’t know their married names, I am hoping they will find me since I also used my maiden name.
Oh and I also have loved the pictures. It’s amazing how some people have changed so much you wouldn’t know them and others look exactly the same!
It also made me realize how much I have missed them!
“I’ve never gotten the appeal of facebook.”
I know I felt the same way....then I kept going to that page and one day I just signed up! It was like I was hypnotized!
Now I love it...
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