The amount of slippery slope fallacy here is overwhelming my tired brain.

Its so hard to argue with this article, not because its well thought out or even because its dumb, its that the core assumption about quitting social media is wrong. Okay, I should be fair, its not just slippery slope here.

The first major assumption is that social media sites are a positive; you can tell the author has that point of view, or is at least taking it for this article, because of how much they view leaving a site as "quitting." If social media is positive, then the opposite - leaving the sites - is clearly negative, right? Right?

Well, is it? Facebook certainly isn't the worst thing in the world, but by no means is it something like transportation. Being able to drive to work has a positive impact on my life; if I stopped driving to work I would have to expend more time and effort (a full hour there and back) just biking. If I quit facebook entirely, and all social media entirely, the impact on my life would actually be minimal.

I could rant on about that for a while, but to be clear here, Facebook and social media sites in general are flat neutrals. They contribute things, that's undeniable. I have a few friends I reconnected with over facebook. Its useful for coordinating group events. This roughly balances the negatives, because you're put in a spotlight every time you use it, and whatever you post is recorded for all time. Also you find out your friends are massively less interesting and intelligent than you think they are. Holy god, stop posting once every 5 minutes. You are why I quit. Yes, you.

Beyond the morality or even the benefits and costs of facebook, the author cites an odd quote. I'll repost it here, so you don't have to look up what I'm talking about:

So don't use a credit card. Don't have cable. Don't use the Internet. Don't use the phone. Don't have a bank account. Don't go to the hospital. Don't have a job. Don't rent an apartment. Don't subscribe to any magazine or newspapers. Don't do anything that creates a record. In other words, go live like a hermit in a mountain or cabin.

That's not the author, that's Daniel Solove, and as the author says, he's taking quitting to an absurd conclusion.

But...its still illustrating the point our author is making in the paragraph prior to it. See what I mean, its hard to criticize because of these weird lines of logic? Might be more easy when I've had more sleep, but its just sort of muddled as an article. I think I generally understand and get what point is being attempted here - that quitting isn't the answer because it just delays the inevitable conflict between privacy and social media - but its a rather schizophrenic and ham-fisted way to deliver it.

Hell, look at the fourth point the author makes:

The fourth problem with the "leave if you're unhappy" ethos is that it is overly individualistic. If a critical mass participates in the "Opt-Out Revolution," what would happen to the struggling, the lonely, the curious, the caring, and the collaborative if the social web went dark? What would a social media blackout mean for youth -- and, indeed, the rest of us -- whose identity and beliefs are shaped by experimenting online? And what of those who feel compelled to stay, due to valuable networks complied and curated over time?

What? Wait, people should stay involved in social media because it might be okay for an indeterminate amount of people because it could possibly have a positive effect on a few of them? Can we get a number on the number of suicides that have been prevented by facebook versus the number its aided? Can we get some sort of numbers? I mean, even anecdotal evidence is fine at this point.

People aren't actually going to quit the internet, its really just social media, if that. You can still collaborate over e-mail, or Google Docs. Or one of the many other masses of sites that have existed since people figured out they could make them. Its weird, and I know the tone of my comment has shifted, but re-reading this article gave me the impression that the author is under the assumption of "first there was nothing, then there was social media."

What about forums? Or chatrooms? I grew up with forums, that was how I learned how to be funny and how to type with as few spelling mistakes as possible. No facebook, not social media. Even for people who weren't really deep in to what the internet was a decade ago, there was still AIM or IIRC or something else to do.

The issue not touched upon here, and the core issue, is that facebook makes your information vulnerable in ways that other sites weren't able to do, and it encourages you to voluntarily give up your personal data. Real name? Done. Age? Done. Relationship status? Post it, aren't you official? Employment history, educational history, your photos, family relations, who your friends are, what you've been doing recently. Share it, come on, put it up there. That's the core problem. Its not that the information is being shared or stored.

People recognize that they leave a data trail; they'd have to be monumentally stupid not to. People also tend not to be bothered by others learning about their official business; so a credit card company has me listed as a number. I don't care. I really don't; its a necessary means of organizing information. The number doesn't tell them anything about me; it tells them "this person owns this credit card and his payment history shows X." Okay, cool.

A facebook profile shows personal information. I'm sure if you went back through my old profile page you discover that my favorite food is vindaloo curry and that sometimes I post shitty music to my wall. You could also find what I look like with messy hair, what I looked like as a baby, what my parents look like, what they do, everything. You can also find out I don't know how to spell vindaloo.

This is not information I share with people regularly. But, the ways its structure encourages people to share it, and therein lies the problem. I'm tired and this rant went all over the place. I'm going to shower and go to class now.

I don't buy it...but having just recently deleted all forms of private social media, I'll comment only on the technical challenges in securing information.

Indeed, if your current social network has no obligation to respect the obscurity of your information, what justifies believing other companies will continue to be trustworthy over time?

The easy answer is nothing. So cut out the middle man. I wouldn't communicate my personal life through a human I don't know, so why the hell would it make sense to send it, in an easily readable form, through a company that stands to benefit from selling my information?

Now, one might be tempted to build a technical solution to this problem. I wouldn't mind a service built around end-to-end secure communication, open source, and easily distributable to multiple servers. One where I could generate a public and private key, and share photos and messages with friends knowing that only those marked as recipients could ever read them.

This already exists in the form of PGP + email, but there is room for tools on top. Perhaps move the storage and transfer elsewhere, since most emails cap the size of individual messages as well as long term archives and generally frowned upon for blanket-sharing. Then just add pretty interfaces and wide-platform support. Let me group my friends' public keys as Google+ manages circles.

If information can be leaked, at least let it require a violation of trust from someone I know personally.

So don't use a credit card. Don't have cable. Don't use the Internet. Don't use the phone. Don't have a bank account. Don't go to the hospital. Don't have a job. Don't rent an apartment. Don't subscribe to any magazine or newspapers. Don't do anything that creates a record. In other words, go live like a hermit in a mountain or cabin.

I wouldn't do any of those things if I could stay functional without them. But the benefits of using a credit card outweigh the costs of being another row in a database collecting statistics on my life. And the difference is that I am perfectly happy living in a world sans Facebook.

In fact, I'd say I'm happier now that I focus solely on my own life without any services reminding me about how others life their's. But that's getting into the psychological side of social networks, which I'll refrain from discussing any further, in this comment at least.

It's odd to see things like Facebook framed as necessary and vital to our social/cultural wellbeing when we've only lived under their influence for a handful of years. Authors do a great job outlining how difficult it is to effectively "quit" Facebook, but don't make half as compelling an argument about why we need Facebook.

Indeed, at a certain point, the authors create sort of a false equivalency between things like Facebook and other privacy-threatening amenities such as credit cards or bank accounts. But the stark fact is, we voluntarily give up some right to privacy when we apply for credit or open a bank account because we actually need those things. We don't need Facebook in the strictest sense, and therefore can afford to pass it up in favor of other social outlets current and future. This article, on the other hand, is predicated on the assumption that we somehow can't afford to live without Facebook. Which is kind of absurd, considering how long we lived without Facebook before we lived with Facebook.

It's also odd that they criticize the "love it or leave it" strategy as "behavior that justifies a never-ending strategy of abandoning every social technology that threatens privacy -- a can being kicked down the road in perpetuity without us resolving the hard question of whether a satisfying balance between protection and publicity can be found online." Isn't abandoning a product due to privacy concerns the free market capitalist solution in and of itself? Isn't this what our economy is predicated upon- the idea that if you don't like a product, you can choose to abandon it until it's been improved, and that enough pressure by way of lost revenue will force improvement? Why, then, should we stick with a product we hate? Because we need it? But we don't.

We'll miss opportunities for self-expression, personal growth, learning, support, and civic exchange.

[Citation needed]

I deleted my Facebook account a month or so ago. I don't miss it, in fact I find some relief in knowing I'm not part of a commercial enterprise that I feel mistrustful of. I have been spending more time reading books and less online which I think will probably give me more opportunities for self-expression, personal growth, learning, support and civic exchange then Facebook ever could.