Didja Delete Your Facebook Yet?

People around the globe are having a crisis of conscience.

Do I delete my Facebook account or do I not?

Even Hamlet didn’t have to contend with such an existential crisis.

Get a grip and some perspective, people.  Take a deep breath, and…one….hold…and two….

And then, if you’re really, really concerned about whether or not the privacy trade-off is worth keeping up with the virtual Joneses, Techpinions did some fast research of 1,000 Americans about their feelings and actions re: Facebook post-Cambridge Analytica;

The big takeaways:

• 17% of respondents said they deleted the Facebook app from their phone over privacy concerns
• 35% said they were using Facebook less than they used to over the privacy issue
• 39% said they were “very aware” of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, while 37% said they were “somewhat aware.”
• 9% reported deleting their Facebook account altogether

So, according to that report, nearly 1 in 10 have said “sayonara” to Facebook. 

For those who stayed, there’s the issue of perhaps exerting more usage of Facebook’s already-extensive privacy controls.  

Facebook VP of global marketing solutions, Carolyn Everson, spoke at The Wall Street Journal CEO Council in London, and indicated that “we have not seen wild changes in behavior with people saying I’m not going to share any data with Facebook anymore,” and that Facebook users largely haven’t changed their privacy settings in the past four weeks since the Cambridge story broke.

If you don’t want to break up with Facebook, but you’d like to exert more control of how your information is used there, check out this guidance from ZDNet.

It’s like getting your PhD in Facebook privacy!