International Law

A few of my friends stubbornly refuse to join Facebook, and I'd always put it down to their own peculiar eccentricities or some need to be contrary, but according to Times Online, they can now claim that they are part of an anti-Facebook movement called "Facebook refusenicks":

Facebook dominated media headlines last year but despite the hype, a growing number of students around the world are refusing to create accounts amid concerns that the social networking phenomenon has come at the expense of users' privacy. Adding more fuel to the fire, website creator Mark Zuckerberg recently revealed that Facebook will be releasing users? details to advertisers that want to target specific genders and age groups.

But an act of rebellion, which finds its roots in a desire for traditional means of communication, has led to a further boycott of Facebook among students at British universities. With student event promoters turning their hands to online marketing and disregarding traditional mediums such as posters and flyers, non-Facebook users are expressing their concerns at being left out.

Now known as "Facebook refusenicks", those not joining the online network community have been finding themselves out of the loop when it comes to events and other student socials, simply because they don?t have access to the information.

Read more here.  This may sound harsh, but these Facebook refusenicks can miss out as far as I'm concerned.  Facebook is free, easy to use, and you control your own privacy settings, so there is really no reason not to join (especially if you're a college or university student).  So if you want to stage some kind of protest, join or create a Facebook group to make that protest instead or simply accept you may miss out on knowing about events.  You can't have your cake and eat it too by refusing to join and then complaining about being out of the loop.