The Swamp

Students against Facebook News Feed (Official Petition to Facebook)

September 6th, 2006 at 9:28 am (The Internet)

Students against Facebook News Feed (Official Petition to Facebook)

Someone invited me to a font group on Facebook, so I had to join. When I got there, I also noticed a group mentioned called “Students against feeds” or something. And I was like, “WHAAAAT? But RSS is the best thing the internet has ever done!” But when I got there, I realized that it was a group against the feeds feature within facebook.

You went a bit too far this time, facebook. Very few of us want everyone automatically knowing what we update. We want to feel just a LITTLE bit of privacy, even if it is facebook. News Feed is just too creepy, too stalker-esque, and a feature that has to go.

We demand that either the feature goes, or that we have an option to remove ourselves from the feature. Nothing people write on our walls, or what we write, or what we update goes up on the “News Feed.” These are small demands of your users, but we are here to complain and protect our privacy.

I know it’s odd to protest facebook through facebook, but this perhaps is the best way for them to get the message.

Until this feature is removed or changed to protect my privacy, I WILL NOT update my profile, and I hope you will too.

So join here, and you’re part of the petition to remove the most undelightful feature to have ever hit facebook.

It gets better.

This group is intended to end Facebook’s recently added “News Feed” feature. We need to convince Mark Zuckerberg and his organization to remove features that irresponsibly widen the audience of private information.
As is known, any user of this website may and often does have “friends” who they barely know, if at all. Some people have friend counts in the four, five, and six hundreds. Is it right for Facebook to automatically broadcast a break up with a boyfriend or a denied friendship-add to all those most peripheral of relationships. Even party attendance is published, am I alone when I say that I have been hurt by NOT being invited to a party?

I propose merely to remove those types of information that may cause social stress and emotional pain for Facebook users in real life. Obviously much of the information included in the update is innocent, if not completely benign. Such as new picture posts etc. But we should not let this update include faculties that destroy our control over the spread of private and likely sensitive information.

However there should be no boycott. This website has served to be a wonderful and practical convenience. And more importantly a venue for laughter, conversation, reminicence, community and even romance. Do we dare let such purpose digress? Do we dare let Facebook become the magazine and we the Brad Pitts and Angelina Jolies.
Facebook is the proletariat, we are Facebook and we should control it. These new features sign the rights over our social lives away to the intangible and entangling automation of the Internet. Say yes and join this group- Cast your vote against such violations and ask others to do the same.

Though our friend counts may total only to a few hundred at most, We, as American college and high school students alike, total to the millions.

I just like the part where he talks about the proletariat. Oh Facebook, you bring out the best in people.