Digital Hill’s Chad Pollitt Featured in The Journal Gazette Discussing Facebook Privacy
The Jounal Gazette
Article published June 06, 2010
Boycot Furthers Web Privacy War
By Jacyln Youhana
Jounal Gazette Correspondent
Fort Wayne – A two-choice Facebook questionnaire: Do you plan to sign into Facebook today, or do you plan to keep it off in protest?
The website www.facebookprotest.com is planning a boycott of the social-networking site today, citing privacy concerns as the primary fuel to its fire. As of 10 a.m. Tuesday, the site had amassed nearly 2,000 followers on Twitter and (ironically) more than 4,000 fans on Facebook.
Facebook has 175 million users who sign in daily, according to TechCrunch, a technology website.
One of the critics’ major concerns? A detail in Facebook’s policy that lets advertisers have access to user information. If a user clicks on an ad, Facebook would provide that advertiser with the subscriber’s user ID, the Washington Post reports.
Users can turn off this function, but it’s not easy – especially for the non-Internet-savvy.
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has responded to the privacy concerns, and on May 26, he unveiled privacy changes in his Facebook blog: “We’ve focused on three things: a single control for your content, more powerful controls for your basic information and an easy control to turn off all applications.” more+