[Air-l] Facebook protests

[Ledbetter, Andrew Michael]

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