---
title: some data points on facebook
date: '2010-05-14'
tags:
- forfacebook
- openservice
- privacy
- software
draft: false
legacy_url: https://lu.is/2010/05/some-data-points-on-facebook/
legacy_source: wordpress
---

My boss has written [a blog post](http://lockshot.wordpress.com/2010/05/14/privacy-is-brewing/") that tries to bring together some recent data points from across the privacy spectrum; it is worth a read. I’ve been noting a few (much smaller, more trivial) things myself over the past few days that suggest to me that privacy concerns in general, but facebook-related privacy concerns in particular, may be reaching a bit of a critical mass.

[![](http://i0.wp.com/farm3.static.flickr.com/2165/2077892948_656f5f96a9.jpg?resize=375%2C500)](http://www.flickr.com/photos/avlxyz/2077892948/)
*[No Facebook](http://www.flickr.com/photos/avlxyz/2077892948/) by [avlxyz](http://www.flickr.com/photos/avlxyz/) used under [CC-BY-SA](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en).*

Some [anecdata](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/anecdata):

- [A graphical interpretation of Facebook’s default privacy settings.](http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/) Putting aside the content and cool presentation, I’ve been seeing this all over the place the past week- it seems to be resonating with a surprising (to me) number of people.
- Danny Sullivan notices that [searching ‘how do I’ on Google… automatically suggests ‘delete my facebook account.’](http://searchengineland.com/how-do-i-delete-my-facebook-account-41651) Again, not hard proof of anything, but suggestive that this is of [trending interest](http://trends.google.com/trends?q=delete+facebook+account&ctab=0&geo=all&date=ytd&sort=0). (Note that the trend is particularly trendy in… NYC and LA?)
- I would have expected that [Diaspora](http://tieguy.org/?s=diaspora) would have a hard time getting to their $10K goal; instead [they’ve raised $136K](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/196017994/diaspora-the-personally-controlled-do-it-all-distr) (and >$27K of it from donations >$350.) I raise this not to say that they will succeed, but to point out that their fundraising totals suggest that there is a pent-up interest in this area.
- James Kwak, a finance blogger (albeit an ex-technologist) [blogging about deleting his facebook account](http://baselinescenario.com/2010/05/09/bye-bye-facebook/). I’ve seen plenty of technologists of various stripes talking about deleting facebook accounts for a while now, but this is the first time I’ve seen someone talking about it in a vaguely more mainstream setting. It is [hitting the mainstream media too](http://news.google.com/news/search?pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=delete+facebook&cf=all&as_qdr=w&as_drrb=q).

These are just anecdotes, and not real data, but to me this feels vaguely different from the ‘rebellion’ in 2006. At that time I said ‘[people adjust and things blow over sometimes.](http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/09/06/facebook-rebellion-and-potential-lessons-for-other-internet-communities/)‘ This one feels different to me, but that is just a vague feeling; it may stem as much from my own facebook fatigue as from any concrete reality. It will be interesting to watch, at any rate.