After learning about ‘Prism’ at 0500 hours (I keep irregular hours) on Saturday June 8 I knew I didn’t have a moral choice but to close and abandon my Facebook account. Without judging anyone else – I know people who actually rely on the network to pay the bills with their promotional work, for example – I put up the first Guardian.co.uk front page splash as a status, explained my reasoning, apologised to the student newspaper editors with whom I’d now have contact only with my mobile or brand spanking new Hushmail address (yes, Google will have to go also) and hit the button. I’d been using Facebook for over four years by this point -just ceasing to use a for-profit website wouldn’t be such a big deal. How could I rationalise my own loathing of the idea of Prism with staying on a network which was part of it?

Well, rational thing to do or not, it has quite noticeable effects on you, especially if you’re not a terribly social person in the first place. There are now rather a lot of people with whom I will probably never connect with again. Old classmates, previous colleagues, when you leave your peers’ most popular social network you’re plunged into a vacuum. The workings of Facebook are conducive to making a real sense of being on other peoples’ road maps. You may not realise how much you miss the few ‘likes’ you get when you share something you find interesting or funny but speaking as one ‘going cold turkey’, you get the pangs. The alternatives are all pretty much dead, either gone completely or long abandoned by your peers. There’s Twitter, of course, but that doesn’t allow you the intimacy of Zuckerberg’s botnet. Twitter is like speaker’s corner contrasted with Facebook’s cozy sixth form common room. You have followers who might see something you post, if you’re lucky, because they’ve got the constant updates from hundreds of sources flashing up on their monitors every second but that’s as good as it gets.

The dominance of Facebook as a public forum is absolute. Even the groups which most vocally attack the monopoly of Zuckerberg, like the Electronic Frontiers Foundation, don’t dare disengage from the site because doing so is auto-ostracisation. It’s a textbook catch-22: you want to protest against surveillance, you should leave Facebook. But to tell people that they should stop using Facebook, you have to…. Use Facebook. The quote attributed to Franklin “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety” gets bandied-around in this topic often. But what about those who would give up liberty to purchase temporary networking? Abandoning Facebook is an ideological act – in terms of actually making a difference it is arguable that sticking with it is a necessity – “the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves” (Pitt the Younger). But in this case, to whom – or what – are you enslaved?

I also penned an arguably rambling comment article about Facebook and ‘Prism’ on my Student Paper’s website which may pique your interest.