Popular Fitness Brand Leaves Facebook, Citing Privacy Concerns

As Facebook continues to get publicly raked over the coals for its privacy and data practices, many users have decided to quit the platform. However, businesses have been slower to say enough is enough. But that changed this week when popular fitness brand CrossFit announced its leaving both Facebook and Facebook-owned Instagram because of concerns over the social media giant’s handling of privacy.

In a post on CrossFit blog Morning Chalk Up, the organization’s founder Greg Glassman said that Facebook “doesn’t comport with my community standards for privacy and decency, so we’re out.”

Glassman specifically criticized Facebook for sharing user information with federal and state authorities, and for censoring and removing user accounts based on “unknown criteria.” He also blasted Facebook for profiting off users’ personal data — a big sticking point for CrossFit, considering it possesses so much information about its members’ health.

Facebook collects, aggregates, and sells user information as a matter of business,” Glassman wrote. “Its business model allows governments and businesses alike to use its algorithmically conjured advertising categories as sophisticated data-mining and surveillance tools.”

This might seem like an extreme reaction, but companies aren’t wrong to be worried about how Facebook is handling their customers’ information. Now it’ll be interesting to see if more businesses follow CrossFit’s example and take a stand against Facebook’s practices.




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