Facing and Defacing Facebook

In recent weeks the regular calls to quit Facebook because of its steadily worsening privacy policies have become louder and more frequent among those who student digital culture and use social media to sustain their own networking practices as activists and academics. In a recent blog posting, Geert Lovink has encouraged Internet artists, activists, and theorists to participate in Quit Facebook Day, which had scheduled a mass deletion on May 31st and signed up over 36,000 fellow quitters. Meanwhile, at the tactical media BANG Lab at UC San Diego, Facebook accounts were also being deleted. BANG artists encouraged Facebook uses to adopt the image above as a profile photo while preparing to exit the site forever.

Of course, not all agreed that deletion was the right course. danah boyd argued that "Quitting Facebook is Pointless." And others suggested that users should "trade in your facebook for a fakebook."