14 DAY TRIAL // A group of Facebook users seems to have had enough of Facebook's privacy concerns and launched an initiative to inform and convince people to delete their Facebook accounts on Memorial Day (May 31st) this year. At this time, more than 14,200 people have committed on the website to quit the social network in an organized planned event and try to transmit a message to the company's management.
The website, called QuitFacebookDay, started by two soon-to-be former Facebook users, makes a short presentation about what led to this extreme measure, presenting a list of issues and media articles about Facebook's latest security debacle.
Despite the fact that Facebook made a pledge to simplify its security settings, and respected it, the group doesn't seem impressed and will continue with its action as planned. “For us it comes down to two things: fair choices and best intentions,” the website reads, accusing Facebook of bad data management, hidden intentions and poor interface design when it comes to individuals managing their account choices.
Leaving the security concerns aside, the founders also compare staying on Facebook with smoking and call it an addiction, recommending users to profit from this occasion and do it together. Their action seems pretty similar to what any addict on treatment would do when confessing and offering support in public sessions.
“Quitting Facebook isn't easy. Facebook is engaging, enjoyable and quite frankly, addictive. Quitting something like Facebook is like quitting smoking. It's hard to stay on the wagon long enough to actually change your habits. Having peer support helps, but the way to quit Facebook is not to start a group on Facebook about leaving Facebook,” the website reads.
And for users not to get lost in Facebook's tricky account management settings page, they are linking to a page where instruction are provided for deleting their Facebook account entirely, and not deactivating it, like many untrained users end up doing.