stevenclark.com.au

This article is going to run off nearly every reader’s back and they won’t get it. I know that going in. Oh they’ll accept that it’s true but behaviours won’t change because humans don’t like giving up stuff that easily. However, if you consider yourself a web professional you should be thinking on this level.

As a web professional we know better than the average person what the online experience should provide, how it should be treated by organisations (ethically, legally and in sustainable business models) and we should be able to fathom the industry expectation of best practice. Why? Because that’s the world we buy into when we shift our self-identity away from two-bit freebie person and become the web professional person.

As a web professional we are representative of the eyes, ears and overall conscience of the industry we create and maintain.

As a web professional we should be the litmus test on what is right and wrong – doing good and failing to support evil – within the web business environment.

As a web professional I am taking the liberty to presume you have already read about this subject and I’m not even going to put links to relevant resources within this article – which says as a web professional I expect a lot of you.

But you all know the score. You’ve all bought into the Facebook paradigm and are afraid to leave… hell, everybody is afraid to leave. Do you even exist if you don’t use your Facebook profile? I’m serious – you will have to forgo what would otherwise be a useful connection within industry and between acquaintances and family.

Here’s why you should leave Facebook en masse as web professionals. Because you know the company is unethical. Because you know when Zuck baby got burned with privacy issues in the past he used to cover up and say it was an accident… but now he’s emboldened because we’ve back-lashed and he’s still grown his business… and he’s in the business of selling our information as a part of his business model.

We, as web professionals, actually get the privacy issue. And yet we’re still there on Facebook. We’re condoning and supporting – and by our presence we are influencing and recommending – an evil company which is bait-and-switching the privacy issue to the general public.

So it comes down to your definition of what a web professional means… this afternoon I will be notifying everyone I know on Facebook that I will no longer be using the service and why… I’ll just have to live without it. All I can say is follow your conscience…

… and don’t complain about the industry going to crap if you’re willing to sell your soul to be a part of it.