I always feel like somebody's watching me

Facebook dropped the ball – big time. The social-networking website popular among college students upset a large portion of its members when it introduced “News Feed.” The feature reported whenever a user changed his or her profile, became friends with another student, updated a picture, or did almost anything else on the website.

If you sneezed, News Feed said “God bless you” and notified all of your friends.

Facebook members complained and the website’s management caved. Students were given the option to disable the feature and Feedgate came to an abrupt end within four days.

Wow. Activism works fast these days.

It’s amazing that a bunch of whiney college students can complain about “privacy” on a site designed to reveal their faces and personal thoughts. It’s even more astonishing that the controllers of such a website would give in to complaints in less than a week. It took previous generations more than a decade to convince the U.S. government to leave Vietnam, but grumbling kids got what they wanted in a few days.

Feedgate obviously doesn’t match the significance of the Vietnam War protests, but it revealed something important: young people aren’t as indifferent as we seem.

Parents, sociologists and old farts across the country say the Facebook Generation (anyone currently 18-25) is apathetic and self-absorbed. Our protest of Facebook and relative silence as people our age are killed in Iraq bodes well for that assumption. But the uproar caused by News Feed illustrates that we too have a fiery, defiant streak. It may rarely come out, but it's there.


When News Feed went live, angered students responded immediately and demanded that it be shut down. They started online petitions that garnered 700,000 signatures and joined groups with names like “AAAA! Facebook is Stalking Me!”

News Feed didn’t reveal anything that wasn’t already public, but many of Facebook’s 9.5 million users saw it as the biggest invasion of privacy since Bush’s domestic wire-tapping scandal. Knowing that the site compiled everyone's activities into a neat little package for friends to track other friends was too much for my pal Linette to handle. She contemplated deleting her account and wondered, “What’s up with the new Facebook [being] all in my face?”

The complaints and threats of a boycott became widespread. Like CEO’s usually do in a PR nightmare, Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberger responded to the uproar by apologizing for his company's digital molestation. Days after News Feed was introduced, Zuckerberger issued this statement:

When we launched News Feed and Mini-Feed we were trying to provide you with a stream of information about your social world. Instead, we did a bad job of explaining what the new features were and an even worse job of giving you control of them. I’d like to try to correct those errors now…

This may sound silly, but I want to thank all of you who have written in and created groups and protested. Even though I wish I hadn’t made so many of you angry, I am glad we got to hear you. And I am also glad that News Feed highlighted all these groups so people could find them and share their opinions with each other as well.

The chaos following News Feed shows that young people are capable of invoking change. No, we’re not marching on Selma to fight prejudice or picketing LBJ to bring the boys home. Hell, most of us wouldn’t know how to make a picket sign if our life depended on it.

But we aren’t lazy demons as older generations would have you believe. We’re willing to oppose invasions of privacy – regardless of how valid the perception may be – just like our parents were. We’re willing to voice our opinion and use the power of organized criticism. An Internet company isn’t as distinguished a target as the CIA or FBI, but the basic anger and sense of injustice is there. Millions of young people felt like someone intruded on their personal space and they responded the quickest way they knew how – using the Internet.

Technology allows college students to do new things and protest in ways that weren’t available decades ago. Actually, we do it in ways that weren’t even available a few years ago. When the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah escalated this summer, young people turned to the Internet. It was an ever-present link for millions of individuals who wanted to join with others in their community (or the world) and do something to end the crisis. Some joined groups on Facebook to protest or support Israel’s bombing of Lebanon. Others used MySpace groups to organize demonstrations and create online petitions to urge the United Nations to intervene.

Thousands of MySpace users even held an online peace vigil by simultaneously displaying the same image of a candle in their profiles. Organized by a 15 year-old girl in Dallas, the vigil became an international symbol of protest for young people troubled by their homeland being destroyed. The girl probably saw it as a way to offer emotional support to people in need, but the project has become a lasting sign that you don’t need large public demonstrations to have your voice heard.

Remember, folks: the First Amendment right to assemble peacefully isn’t exclusive to city hall. Many in the Facebook generation spend a large amount of time on the Internet, and it’s natural that we would use it to promote a cause. We grew up knowing more about America Online than American history, so don’t be surprised that we employ new tactics to achieve our goals. Previous generations should learn to respect the creative use of technology because when we run the world, digital defiance will be standard. Not to sound cocky, but we're an advanced generation.

Wait a second. I just logged into my Facebook account and discovered something disturbing: there are dozens of groups now supporting News Feed. Crap. I just spent all this time trying to dispel one notion about our generation and people have confirmed a different one. We may not be apathetic, but we damn sure are fickle.