Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Retreats on Online Tracking
Nrbelex writes "Facebook is reining in some aspects of a controversial new advertising program, after users became extremely upset and threatened various 'protests' over possible privacy infringement issues. 'Late yesterday the company made an important change, saying that it would not send messages about users' Internet activities without getting explicit approval each time ... Facebook executives say the people who are complaining are a marginal minority. With time, Facebook says, users will accept Beacon, which Facebook views as an extension of the type of book and movie recommendations that members routinely volunteer on their profile pages.'"
The two of your are the "marginal minority", in legalese: fuck off.
But too late for me...I already deleted my Facebook profile when they launched this abominable feature.
New account; I'm miserable at managing all my log/pass combos.
Is there really much Slashdot/Facebook overlap? Everyone I know on this forum just hosts their own personal site(s). Facebook seems like more of a newbie technology than would normally be attractive to the average Slashdotter: kind of one step up from "what's your favorite desktop background image?"
"would not send messages about users' Internet activities without getting explicit approval each time"
Invade your privacy? (cancel) or (allow)?
Is there a stand alone program with the same features as these online sites? Something with custom privacy settings. A merger of email, chat, and file sharing doesn't seem that far fetched. Wasn't ICQ a lot like this? Its been a long time since I have seen the program.
Facebook Executives wrote: Facebook executives say the people who are complaining are a marginal minority. With time, Facebook says, users will accept Beacon, which Facebook views as an extension of the type of book and movie recommendations that members routinely volunteer on their profile pages.
What they meant: "We're turning it off for now, but we're going to slowly and deliberately swing it back to an on by default system."
As far as the claim that the complainants are a "marginal minority", I think that it's only a "marginal minority" of Facebook users that even knew the system existed, and probably a smaller minority that had any personal experience with it.
And then they will tell there Amazon partiners and next time you check you're email you'll will get a recommendation about a book all about using the correct grammar for writing Englishings.
Next thing, you'll get phone calls offering you fasterinternetserviceprovidings
"With time, Facebook says, users will accept Beacon, which Facebook views as an extension of the type of book and movie recommendations that members routinely volunteer on their profile pages."
Translation: We're not sorry, and in a week we think that everyone will have forgotten about the privacy issues, just like the news feed.
I'm seriously considering closing my Facebook. Free service hemorraging privacy by the day = Mistake. Facebook is definitely past its prime.
Another poster (when the Beacon article was on Slashdot previously) said that the facebook belief was that "it's better to ask forgiveness than permission". Definitely the case here...
Facebook says it is a vocal minority who are complaining. Perhaps it is the same minority who make up a majority of the page hits that the advertisers pay for?
Facebook is no smarter than the record companies. You do not anger the constituents of your revenue stream.
Our small startup company makes a successful online scientific app and management got it in their heads after talking to some of our investors that we need to drop everything and spend the next three months cramming "socialization" features into it. We have no time for this (we need to make performance and scalability improvements). I would prefer not to leave the job with its short commute, good pay, and free lunches. But everyone is drinking the Kool Aid, and nobody seems to realize that this fad is almost over. What do I do?
It's funny that a group of people are getting all huffy over 'privacy concerns' when they signed up to a website and give away all sorts of personal information for free. You don't want your privacy invaded? Then delete your account. Or at the very least, think before you go telling the world about your midnight drunken encounters with cops/dirty hookers/other drunken college students/etc.
Remember a limited profile only keeps out other dirty facebook users, but it doesn't keep the employees from having access to all of your inputted information.
Well, I'll give Facebook points for once again responding fairly quickly and positively to complaints from their user base. In an age when most corporations treat customers as an irritation rather than a valued client this seems like a good thing.
Hopefully Facebook's example will be noticed by other companies and sites, who will learn to back down when they have done something stupid or unpopular.
Facebook's exec is right though - the vast majority of users just don't care, and likely quite a few of them would have liked having their name and picture popping up all over the place. Facebook could have gone ahead with Beacon quite successfully, but dropped it nonetheless.
Let's give credit where credit is due.
Three Squirrels
How big is 49.999%?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Further down, the reason Facebook changed the policy:
Hard to be an ad-supported site if the advertisers won't advertise...
Best Slashdot Co
I assume ring in the story was bought by a Facebook ad, ergo don't buy stuff via the ad on Facebook. This was in the Wash Post today so could get widespread coverage. Especially young people can be quite fickle and could turn away from Facebook. All it can take is one slip up to lose your reputation, just another reminder of this.
BBC News had an article about this today. It seems that informaton about your purchases, or product browsing history is sent to your friends and businesses. At this time of year, this could spoil one or two surprise Christmas presents.
My web domain.
I found this site: http://www.bspcn.com/2007/11/09/block-facebook-beacon/ with instructions on how to block beacon with firefox. I'm not sure how effective it is.
One day -- maybe -- Facebook users will get together and protest something really important. So much energy, so much potential...
I wasn't one of users that protested feeds. In fact, I *like* feeds. They let me keep up with my friends.
But this new advertising scheme has basically killed them. 3/4 of the slots in my friends feed is now taken up with "So and so has added "Some Movie" to their Blockbuster Online queue" (oh, and the extra ads they inject anyways).
Facebook's search for revenue seems to have gone awry...
Does this mean I have to stop buying porn over the internet?
"...which Facebook views as an extension of the type of book and movie recommendations that members routinely volunteer on their profile pages."
There's a -very- big difference between "I bought the DVD." and "I bought the DVD and liked it." If they really want to make it a user recommendation then they need to provide a mechanism for the user to go back and say "Yeah, I bought that movie but it was so horrible that I want to gouge out my eyes to avoid seeing anything so bad ever again."
Facebook doesn't delete profiles. They only 'deactivate' them. Which is creepy enough for me to ever want to go back to Facebook-land again.
As mentioned here: http://securitymusings.com/article/202/facebook-ruining-christmas:
Not only did Facebook show an ability to ruin the surprise of Christmas presents, it also begs greater questions about purchasing privacy and the first amendment. Rather than the NSA subpoenaing amazon.com to find out what books you like to read, perhaps they could just put up a flash web ad that reads your amazon cookies and finds out your latest "looked at" items?
Be careful out there, kids!
Check out our infosecurity industry blog: http://securitymusings.com/
So, it's back to the good ol' fashioned methods of cyberstalking, rather than being simply handed all the information? *sigh* Back to LiveJournal for the Facebook freaky-followers...
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
I have a facebook account and I'm not worried at all. Why? Because I have no friends.
Anyways, this change to Beacon is good news, even tho the info is still sent to Facebook's marketing database, and there is still no global opt-out. Actually the thing that still really bothers me is that when people do ok one of these notifications, or they "fan" a product w/ Facebook's new product pages service, ads pop up in newsfeeds for that product, using the user's picture. There's no way to opt out of these newsfeed ads, so this could get really annoying if people start clicking ok and/or becoming fans of a lot of products. I guess I could just de-friend any friend who does that, but that doesn't seem like the best solution.
I wonder if there is a simple way to make Firefox to delete all Facebook's cookies upon exit a Facebook page...
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Forget when they decide to post about your activities online - their terms and conditions clearly state that if they want to, they can take that photo that you posted of you under a beer funnel at a frat party and sell it to anybody they want. You might end up in a TV commercial and receive no notice, compensation, or even acknowledgment. If you write something interesting in a note, they can publish it and collect profits from it. Scary.
Uhhh... yeah, it was for his wife... it became for her after she found out about it...
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Which they will continue to do, even if you "opt out" of the feature. No company should be getting updates telling them where else on the web I go.
I've already blocked *facebook.com/beacon/* in my browsers, but I shouldn't have to, in order to prevent merchants from keeping Facebook informed as to my activities. Any merchant that implements this in any other way than an opt-in for sending the data to Facebook in the first place will not be getting my business, and I intend to tell them exactly why.
...because "hacker" sounds way sexier than "code drone."
This is why I always falsify the information I've given to a social networking site before I attempt to cancel or delete my account. ...the information I haven't falsified already.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
Someone with some mod points please counter this troll rating. There is no reason for it.
Seems like someone just disagreed with what he said.
We have four boxes with which to defend our freedom: the soap box, the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.
Isn't Facebook a vehicle FOR sharing personal information?
I'm not trying to be facetious here. Think about it. You put your picture, maybe your general location, your name and whatever, on the website. A little time spent with various search engines can usually provide even more personal information derived from the information posted to Facebook.
If I were the the guy running facebook, my response to anyone that protested the site would be to simply delete any and ALL information regarding that person.
I can already see what sort of response that would elicit from the user though. Even more indignation.
Some people just don't get it. If you value your your privacy, stop shooting holes in the bottom of the boat by using social networking sites like this in the first place.
I bet you the real story is that they eventually figured out that what they were doing is quite likely illegal, but don't wish to admit so.
Are you adequate?
"We eventually figured out that what we were doing is quite likely illegal, so now we'll roll back the most blatant aspects of it before we get sued, without ever admitting to its questionable legality."
Are you adequate?
The text of the terms is almost exclusively framed in terms of copyright. Just because you have a copyright license to a work doesn't mean that you can do anything whatsoever with it. In this context, "for any purpose" means that the copyright license itself does not restrict the purpose to which you may use the content, but there may still be other laws that restrict the use of the content.
To use a recognizable portrait of somebody to promote a product, service or idea, typically, you need additional permission to do so. If I take a recognizable photo of you and Blockbuster wants to use it in their advertisements, they need my permission to use that photo (since I'm the copyright holder) and your permission (as a model release) to use your likeness in that photo to promote their business (since you're the person who is the photo's subject).
And also, permission to use your likeness for promotional purposes might not be possible to establish through a clickable ToS; it boils down to the question whether you are receiving valuable consideration in exchange for permitting use of your likeness.
Are you adequate?
Perhaps, although you certainly *do* have to stop *paying* for it immediately regardless.
You buy porn???
... and then they built the supercollider.