"Don't Default Away My Data" Demo at Facebook HQ in Palo Alto

Today's Facebook demonstration started in the heart of downtown Palo Alto in Lytton Plaza where the Raging Grannies posed in their Facebook "costumes" for a lunchtime crowd and a Japanese blogger. The Grannies then continued their demonstration in front of nearby Facebook headquarters in Stanford Research Park where they were met by members of the press eager to hear and document in film and photo the Grannies' position.

The U.S. Congress' interest in probing Facebook's privacy practices keeps growing and some Representatives are calling for a Federal Trade Commission investigation of the social networking giant. "Finally, Congress is waking up to Facebook's customer abuses" said one of the Grannies today. She has a Facebook account, which her adult children use to message her.

Raging Granny Gail Sredanovic, said that the Grannies' concerns have been building for a long time. "Facebook betrayed its users by changing their privacy policy without notifying them and sharing information with advertisers that users thought was private," she said, adding that "Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg justified this by saying that social norms had changed, a level of manipulation that makes us think of Big Brother in Orwell's 1984." On Friday, May 28, a House of Representatives committee responsible for writing some electronic privacy laws sent a letter to Zuckerberg asking for details on when the company shared user data without the knowledge of the account holders.

Eve Matelan, a youthful affiliate of the Raging Grannies said, "Facebook's Instant Personalization still confuses me! You can turn it on or off, but there's nothing about kind of information third party sites might get if it's on, or how they can use it. If Facebook wants to regain our confidence, it needs to return to the openness that made it so successful in the first place... for users, not just for vendors!"

The Raging Grannies are social justice activists, mostly old enough to be grandmothers, who are sometimes caught on the wrong side of the digital divide. "But when even our affiliates like Ms. Matelan, who is only 32, are confused by Facebook privacy choice instructions, we know there is a problem" they said today. In 2008 and again in 2009 the Raging Grannies demonstrated about a different Facebook issue when they objected to that company's removal of user-posted images that show women breastfeeding their babies.
Links to photos of Grannies protesting at Facebook HQ by Getty Images and Associated Press:

http://www.daylife.com/photo/03vF6DJ3021DY?q=raging+grannies

http://www.daylife.com/photo/06tYaIG8kAa5E?q=raging+grannies

http://www.daylife.com/photo/04JLfWqaZma7Y?q=raging+grannies

http://www.daylife.com/photo/00OD6hV228gYV?q=raging+grannies

http://www.daylife.com/photo/0f8892Y8km218?q=raging+grannies

http://www.daylife.com/photo/0ggg3jU0wh4Lz?q=raging+grannies