As Facebook comes under fire for a data privacy scandal, some users in Massachusetts and elsewhere are declaring a small protest on the world's largest social network by logging off for good.
Sam Nasser, a student who lives in Boston, signed on to the campaign to delete Facebook this week. Nasser said the last straw was the report that Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics firm, improperly accessed tens of millions of users’ data without their knowledge.
"I am just done with Facebook," Nasser said. "It's not a social network, it's become an advertising network."
Nasser is not alone in his frustration. The hashtag #DeleteFacebook is trending on Twitter.
"I would consider it," Barbara Summers of Cambridge said. "A friend of mine just let me know she was deleting it, as well."
Others say it is not so easy to click quit in a society that has come to rely on social media to connect, whether it is staying in touch with family or using it for a job.
"I use Facebook every single day and I would never be able to give it up," Benjamin Lev of Cambridge said. "I'm OK with sharing my information. I have nothing to hide."
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Facebook does not make it easy to quit, even telling you what friends will miss you before you go.
David Gerzof, CEO of BIGfish PR in Brookline and a communication studies professor at Emerson College, says there are ways to limit what you share by monitoring what applications you have authorized to have access to your information. By going into privacy settings, a user does have the ability to remove applications that are not wanted, but Gerzof says it is impossible to lockdown your profile entirely.
"You're always going to be giving up some bit of data," Gerzof said. "That's part of the deal with Facebook and part of the reason why it's free to use."
Facebook says it can take up to 90 days to remove your information from their servers once you delete your profile. If you log in within 14 days of doing so, your account is re-activated.
