Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg broke four days of silence Wednesday by posting about the Cambridge Analytica controversy involving a data mining company linked to the Trump campaign. Zuckerberg says Facebook has a "responsibility" to protect users' data, and that "if we can't then we don't deserve to serve you." That may come as a relief to many aficionados of the social media platform, but others say it may be time to bid farewell.
Dave Rollins of Augusta, Maine, gave himself and his 1,600 friends a deadline in a Tuesday post.
"As of Friday I no longer want to post or use Facebook to connect with friends," he wrote.
Then Rollins, who also happens to be the mayor of Augusta, got a barrage of replies. Some friends supported the move. Some said they were sorry to see him go and some said there should be no expectation of privacy on Facebook.
"My concern is not for me individually but for the collective group of us all," Rollins says. "When people are harvesting information and then targeting misinformation that is targeted specifically against somebody and for somebody's benefit, we need to be very concerned about that."
Rollins says he'll shut down his Facebook account, at least for a while, until some changes have been made to protect users.
This is a common sentiment that's being expressed across social media. Hashtag deletefacebook has picked up steam on Twitter - and until his post on Facebook Wednesday, so had criticism for Mark Zuckerberg.
"I just feel like Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg's reaction to this has been incredibly disappointing," says Genevieve Morgan.
Morgan, of Portland, is an author and the co-chair of the Women's March Maine Coalition. She's been using Facebook to promote her work and to communicate with family and friends from all over the country and she says it's been a useful tool, especially for organizing events, for checking to see if your friends are going and figuring out a place to meet up.
But she says she's upset about what she calls an "egregious overstepping of privacy" by Facebook. "I'm considering deleting my account. I'm weighing the ups and downs because I do like the immediacy of being able to talk to my friends. I do like some of the intellectual conversation. So I do feel like it has a use. I wish there was a more private platform."
In his Facebook post Zuckerberg promised to take steps to restrict data access and to inform users how they can bolster their privacy settings.
But some say the Cambridge Analytica scandal illustrates why the time has come to consider regulating the social networking site. Deborah Cook of Portland is one of them. She says initially, Facebook was a fun place to share posts about food. But now it's become a source of news and other information.
"Now we know that it can be manipulated," she says, "so I think, just like we regulate other public services, public utilities, we should be looking at that with companies like Facebook."
Cook says she, too, thought about deleting her account. And then she realized how much she'd miss - about births and deaths and what's happening with her friends and family. She'd also be in the dark about community events and lose certain connections to groups she supports around Maine. "And I think that would be a huge loss if we all jumped off Facebook."
"Currently, I'm pretty disillusioned right now with Facebook," says Brian Hodges, of Palm Coast, Florida. Hodges is a native Mainer who uses Facebook to keep in touch with extended family, friends and colleagues back home. He says he's pleased that Zuckerberg is pledging to make changes to the platform, but Hodges says he's still thinking about pulling the plug on his account.
Either way, all of the people interviewed for this story say they are changing their privacy settings, eliminating certain details about themselves and will be much more cautious about what they post in the future.
