Or, All we are saying is give feeds a chance…
Facebook‘s recent changes that allow online buddies keep closer tabs on each other has half a million Facebook users — many of them college students — up in arms. The Facebookers fear the tweaks create a “creepy” and “stalker-esque” atmosphere on the social networking site.
The changes come in the form of news feeds that notify users when their friends have uploaded new photos or changed their profiles in some other fashion.
A disgruntled user has created a petition urging Facebook to go back to its old-school ways. As it currently stands, “We all know who has dumped who, who is doing what, and who doesn’t like something anymore. This is invasive, and while it is displayed for others to see, it is not meant to bombard their homepage.” (Source: Digital Micro Markets, which tongue-in-cheekedly likens the protest to the civil rights protests of the 1960s and suggests that “the thousands of unhappy, non-paying users of Facebook can … use their allowance pools to hack an online social networking cool app more to their liking!”)
Meanwhile, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is urging calm. “We are listening to all your suggestions about how to improve the product; it’s brand new and still evolving.”
I don’t get why the subscribers are so upset. When you join a social network on the web, you’re forfeiting quite a bit of privacy and are tacitly agreeing to live a fishbowl sort of life, at least to your closest online friends. But perhaps this will be a wake-up call for millennials to think about issues of privacy and use a bit more caution in who they let into their social networks.
Andy writes! 
As both a web designer and a facebook user I can see how people dislike the new changes. When you login it sends you to a page that shows everything that anyone you are linked to has done. Who that added as friends, people they wrote messages to, what groups they joined. I think one of the main issues is that is was just sprung on people.
This really should have been an opt in thing. Not take what you get. Now that they have it added there isnt even the option to opt out. You can remove the items but you have to do it on a one by one basis. There is no approval before things are added to you page.
So in general I think it was a huge change to spring on people and not give them the option to opt out or in. Yes you do give up some privacy by being on these site but I dont need my personal details paraded to everyone I know everything I login.
I was a little miffed when I logged in some-odd days ago and discovered the feed. I’m not as upset as some people are about the addition, but I’m not too happy either and don’t really see the need for the tool. I log on to check out what friends are doing, but I don’t need to know who they befriended at 2:37 PM that day or what group was joined. Just as well, I don’t feel the pages I’ve visited while logged on should be displayed on my profile page. My page is only viewable to immediate friends so I can‘t really complain, but I still don’t understand why the details of what I do should be accessible to them.
It’s advised not to include so much personal information for fear of internet and real life stalking, but now that we can track everyone’s movement on this social network, isn’t it a little close to the real thing?
Oh, it is a novel concept, but perhaps as Matt suggested, there should be an option tab for the feed if the user is OK with making his/her profile public and not as limited access/friends only.
I think the option tab would be a nice, well, option.
Looks like the Facebook folks are owning up to their missteps now.