The Observer, September 8, 2006
Volume XXXIX, Issue 2
New Facebook features disturb students
If you're anything like the average Case student, chances are you spend much more time procrastinating in front of your computer than writing lab reports and essays. But Tuesday, Sept. 5 saw a change in one of the nation's most popular procrastination devices that was greeted by surprise and outrage by students on campuses from California to Ohio.
Facebook, the popular social networking site that allows college students, high school students, and others across the country to be "friends" and "poke" each other, debuted a new service Tuesday that allows all users to see when someone makes a change to their information – instantly.
The new news feed feature is not optional, and also shows when users "friend" others, decline or accept invitations to events, and make comments on other users' "walls." Launched with no warning, and no option of getting back the old, semi-private Facebook, the facelift was greeted with consternation and revulsion by many Case students.
"It's awful," said sophomore Jenny Zuk. "I know Facebook is about publicizing personal information, but this is taking it too far." Most students share Zuk's opinion, adding that the news feed, which generates headlines about a user's friends which are instantly available after logging in, is "creepy." According to junior Carolyn Heine, the news feed "should be optional," and it "encourages stalking." This new openness worries many, and not unjustifiably, since Facebook is the number one site online for photos, with 1.5 million uploaded daily, and the seventh most-visited site in America. Over 7.5 million college Facebook accounts currently exist, with over 20,000 new profiles created daily.
Appropriately, within hours of the new Facebook's debut, Facebook groups were formed to protest the news feed feature. One such group, Students Against Facebook News feed, asked the creators of Facebook to discontinue the news feed feature, claiming that "you scare us;" the group had about 400,000 members at the time of publication. Other groups have formed in support of the Facebook news feed, and still more request a less "cluttered" newsfeed. The rapidity of the reactions to the changes on Facebook speaks volumes about the site's popularity.
While it remains to be seen if these groups, and the students behind them, have any success in changing the new Facebook features, these events have certainly been indicative of the concerns on college campuses today, and raise important issues of privacy and safety among college students.
