So, you want to quit Facebook?

Following CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement at F8 that he would be changing the privacy controls on Facebook, 25,418 users signed up to stage a protest today and quit. But will they actually pull the plug?

QuitFacebook.com says that user should quit for two reasons:

1) Fair choices and best intentions. In our view, Facebook doesn’t do a good job in either department. Facebook gives you choices about how to manage your data, but they aren’t fair choices, and while the onus is on the individual to manage these choices, Facebook makes it damn difficult for the average user to understand or manage this. We also don’t think Facebook has much respect for you or your data, especially in the context of the future.

2) For a lot of people, quitting Facebook revolves around privacy. This is a legitimate concern, but we also think the privacy issue is just the symptom of a larger set of issues. The cumulative effects of what Facebook does now will not play out well in the future, and we care deeply about the future of the web as an open, safe and human place. We just can’t see Facebook’s current direction being aligned with any positive future for the web, so we’re leaving.

With a user base that is approaching 500 million worldwide, 25,418 is a very small amount that seem so concerned (in percentage terms its 0.006%).

And why should more be, Zuckerberg has done a back flip on the controls and promised to make them more simple.

In a Washington Post editorial, he claimed it was never Facebook’s intent to be seen as an entity which deliberately collected and shared personal information to be sold.

Whether that’s enough to limit any damage done to the site by movements such as Quit Facebook Day will be anyone’s guess, as Facebook doesn’t include deactivated accounts when it comes to its “how many million users” milestone announcements.

It’s possible, of course, that the number of Facebook quitters will rise dramatically today, but the lack of interest thus far is a telling indication of the average Facebooker’s indifference to the ongoing privacy debate.

Furthermore, Google has released web traffic data over the weekend that indicate Facebook is king when it comes to online visitors.

Facebook.com is visited monthly by 540 million people, or slightly more than 35% of the internet population, according to Google Ad Planner worldwide data gathered using recently-acquired Double Click.

Approximately 570 billion pages are viewed monthly at Facebook.com, more than eight times as many pages as are viewed each month at second-place Yahoo.com, which gets 490 million visitors, according to Google.