A Permanent Facebook Holiday?

User concerns over the way social networking site Facebook has handled personal data have reached so keen a pitch that this Monday—May 31—could become a permanent holiday for some of the site’s 400 million users.

“Quit Facebook Day” reflects the backlash users could exhibit toward the site, according to San Jose television station KFSN. The site has “permeated every aspect of communications” for its users, including sharing photos with friends, updating a relationship status and even delivering the local news, but many users think its use of personal data has gone too far.
 
A Web site dedicated to the online withdrawal movement concedes that "Facebook is engaging, enjoyable and quite frankly, addictive. Quitting something like Facebook is like quitting smoking,” and no easy feat, the Quit Facebook Day group concedes.

Still, there’s a groundswell for an "unfriending" movement, according to U.K. pollster Sophos. Computerworld reported that nearly half of Facebook’s users could drop the site over data privacy concerns—irrespective of any Quit Facebook Day movement. An online poll of 1,600 users found that 16 percent have already quit, 30 percent said they are "highly likely" to quit for the same reasons and another 30 percent said it was “possible” they would quit on similar grounds.

But as the advocates of closing the page on Facebook admit, it’s easier said than done. “It's hard to stay on the wagon long enough to actually change your habits," reads the Quit Facebook Day's Web site. "Having peer support helps, but the way to quit Facebook is not to start a group on Facebook about leaving Facebook.”