[Air-l] Facebook protests

[Deanya Lattimore]

Yes, I feel a bit stalked on Facebook now.  I *hate* the new feeds, but 
I can see where people will grow to like them.  As Zukerberg on 
Facebook's blog ( http://blog.facebook.com/ ) points out, you can still 
keep "outsiders" from seeing what you're doing.  It reminds me of the 
old "6 degrees" kinds of pages where your social nets become 
transparent.

Anyone who thinks she can engage in private acts while on a computer 
has a serious wake-up call in her future anyway.  This is good for my 
dissertation, which is about seeing computer writing as a variable 
level of writing in a public space.

This, to me, is just more ammunition for my argument that readers hold 
more control over the new technologies than writers do.  Readers want 
information even when writers are loathe to give it.

:-D.
Deanya
ps. I have 28 friends today who have joined the "NOT HAPPY WITH 
FACEBOOK"  group, LOL!  If you want to Friend me there, I'm Deanya 
Lattimore at Gardner-Webb University.



On Wednesday, September 6, 2006, at 10:01  PM, Ledbetter, Andrew 
Michael wrote:

> Just wondering if anyone had any thoughts on the recent changes at 
> facebook and subsequent user response:
>
> http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71739-0.html?tw=rss.technology
>
> Briefly, facebook recently enabled "news feeds" which allow anyone's 
> friends to immediately see changes to profiles, friendship networks, 
> etc., a feature which cannot be deactivated. In response, many users 
> have formed protest groups, one of which has approximately half a 
> million members (and there are thousands of other protest 
> groups)---the users claim the changes are "stalker-ish". Media is 
> framing as a tension between the transparency of social networking 
> sites and desire for privacy.
>
> Andrew M. Ledbetter
> Doctoral Candidate
> Department of Communication Studies
> University of Kansas
>
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