Otherwise: If your posts (there was an earlier one) had focused on desirable ways to influence FB, I would not have commented in the first place. If that’s the main focus, it strikes me as well-hidden as compared to comments about people’s professional ability and employability–which have nothing to do with influencing FB. (And, of course, collective action through organizations doesn’t require that each member of the organization retain their personal FB account if they regard FB as untrustworthy.)

Reading the post itself for the third or fourth time, it says nothing about influencing FB–not one word. (Unless you want to count the extremely indirect note in the final sentence–an odd comparison, since G8 and G20 are closed groups. I’d argue that protesting will have precisely as much effect on G8 and G20 as anything else an ordinary citizen can do.) The argument that library people can’t influence FB if they’re not members only shows up in your response to my comment. An odd way to make your primary point, by omitting it entirely!

In practice, what appears to influence FB is the constant hammering of commentators, both Gurus and others–well, maybe with a vague hint of government investigation attached. In a way, it’s that string of protests that seem to be having an effect.

The post also said librarians should “use the full range of web tools,” a potentially unlimited set. Now you say “the primary tools and environments”–a very different thing (although still undefined).

To the best of my knowledge, the number of librarians who publicly said they were leaving FB as part of a “me too” boycott is tiny–I doubt that I could identify more than two or three. I believed then and continue to believe that it’s both professionally competent and in some ways admirable for a librarian to leave FB as a matter of principle (also a very small number, at least those saying so in public), and that it’s insulting to suggest that doing so is an admission of professional inadequacy. The whole issue of organizational pressures is entirely different, and also not addressed in your post.

I regret that you feel that I was being personal and making a comment on your personal reading skills. You’ll have to take my word for it that nothing could be further from the truth and I will attest that you read very well. I apologize that you took offense. By way of explanation, from your first comment on my post, I realized that my post could be misread and attempted to clarify and point people on to the main point – how do we influence FB?

You asked “don’t principles count?” Sure they do. I still argue that being one of potentially 25,000+ people closing their Facebook accounts out of 400 million active users is too tiny a number to make any difference (that’s something like 0.000625% altho my math can be error prone and you’re the survey expert). As I noted in the comments, I think that collective action through our associations is a better way to influence Facebook and with us as users not bystanders. It appears that some people defend bailing as a principled act which it definitely is. I just question whether it will have the impact it should. I also question how much power non-users will have over time. I doubt it will make enough difference. It’s a shame that too few are taking up the fight to have FB investigated and new rules/laws in place and using our associations to take collective action. I’ll still be pumping for that strategy while others defend the impact of a boycott. I realize there are different points of view and maybe I’ll be proven wrong and a tiny consumer revolt may have more impact. In the past few weeks the small group of us attempting to get governments to investigate are starting to bear fruit in some countries.

We’ll have to agree to disagree about whether professional librarians need to able to use the primary tools and environments of the web and whether that is a key requirement for hiring.

Lastlly, my sources for saying that the majority of Internet users use FB is the standard Pew surveys. We can probably find competing data as well but is there anyone who wants to argue that a minority of academic and college users are on FB? High school students? Urban users? Canadians? Is it a good strategy for people to be looking for data and reasons to avoid FB and studying its impact on their user communities? I am just saying that being outside the fence is not the right way to run insititutional strategies.

I hope I’ll see you at ALA this year. Are you coming? I’d love to know what is behind your comment on my “About the Author” blurb. Is there something untrue in it? Should I be offended that your comment is some sort of arch comment? Otherwise, I’ll call you if I can’t see you face to face.

Cheers,

Stephen

I imagine that most public sector employers in the US follow a similar practice for litigation risk management, but I have no proof of this.