James Losey from the New America Foundation writes, "I wanted to share New America Foundation's president Steve Coll's reasoning as to why he is leaving the Facebook. He analyzes a range of concerns including privacy concerns, a chaotic IPO, questionable corporate-governance system, mixed with a lack of user rights. "
I established a Facebook account in 2008. My motivation was ignoble: I wanted to distribute my journalism more widely. I have acquired since then just over four thousand 'friends'–in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, the Middle East, and of course, closer to home. I have discovered the appeal of Facebook's community–for example, the extraordinary emotional support that swells in virtual space when people come together online around a friend's illness or life celebrations.
Through its bedrock appeals to friendship, community, public identity, and activism–and its commercial exploitation of these values–Facebook is an unprecedented synthesis of corporate and public spaces. The corporation's social contract with users is ambitious, yet neither its governance system nor its young ruler seem trustworthy. Then came this month's initial public offering of stock–a chaotic and revealing event–which promises to put the whole enterprise under even greater pressure.
I quit FB a few years back. I felt like it took a lot more from me than it gave me.
(Thanks, James!)
