Facebook Caves To Privacy Protests Over Beacon

jcatcw writes "After weeks of privacy protests over its advertising system, Facebook's CEO announced that users now can turn the system off completely. CEO Zuckerberg said 'We simply did a bad job with this release.' Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, called the announcement from Zuckerberg 'a step in the right direction.'"

Comments

Thank god

[Samalie]

Of course, they really should just kill the application alltogether, but at least its a step

Re:Thank god

[Seumas]

Like the kind of people that flock to these types of social networks give two shits about privacy. They'd probably give it up for a tootsie roll in-between clicking on the dancing monkey banners.

Re:Thank god

[Samalie]

I never said that the "kind of people that flock....give two shits about privacy"

But that doesn't mean that these same people don't deserve privacy if they want it.

I'm sure that 99.9% of the Facebook population won't turn Beacon off. But at least they have the ability now.

Re:Thank god

[WillAffleckUW]

Like the kind of people that flock to these types of social networks give two shits about privacy. They'd probably give it up for a tootsie roll in-between clicking on the dancing monkey banners.

There are no dancing monkey banners on Facebook, unless you add them to your own page.

Re:Thank god

[Kris_J]

There are two good reasons (one shit each?) that facebook users cared about this. Some activities they might engage in are embarrassing (Porn, donating to Greenpeace, etc) and some activities are supposed to be a surprise to their friends (say, xmas and birthday gifts).

Facebook might look like everyone is an open book, but the information shared and public activities seen are carefully chosen for a variety of complex social reasons. Beacon was completely ignorant of this.

Re:Thank god

[ThePengwin]

Or you have a bunch of people who install apps they say "hey do this cool stuff!!!" that send you invites to everything.

If i want a dam app ill install it myself... :P

Re:Thank god

[DigitalCrackPipe]

I suggest that the very idea that 99.9% of users aren't expected to take advantage of the off feature is reason enough to offer it. Appease the (sometimes very) vocal minority who wants control over such things, and avoid the massive PR whiplash that comes from not giving that choice. And still, make tons of money from the large percentage of people who don't care. Not making revenue from the small percentage of people who rush to turn Beacon off is probably a much better option than missing all the people who will do it now that the controversy hit the media.

Re:Thank god

[encoderer]

FWIW, facebook has the best default privacy settings of all the social networking sites.

By default, only those in your network can see ANYTHING about you. This would be people in your own school or whatever. And within that, you have a number of privacy setting controlling whether only your direct friends can see things.

In a number of ways... I've always thought that Facebook is to Apple what MySpace is to Microsoft...

Well...

[roadkill_cr]

I respect that they admit they are wrong, but I find it scary that it took them so long to realize what a privacy issue this is. For an organization with so much information, I had hoped they would put privacy #1 on their priority list.

Re:Well...

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

The temptation to cash out is just too great for most companies. The only reason why Slashdot isn't worse is because of Taco. I'm not sure why though. Does the contract that gives him full editorial control, fail to specify a system of bonuses based upon ad revenue? Or is he just that incorruptible? or I guess its possible that he just wants a fun solid job with a long term future, rather than a quick cash out. He mentioned the topic a bit during the anniversary hubabaloo, but the monetary link wasn't mentioned, although If I were him I wouldn't have mentioned it either.

Re:Well...

[value_added]

The temptation to cash out is just too great for most companies. The only reason why Slashdot isn't worse is because of Taco.

I was originally planning on waxing poetic about the golden age of business when trust and respect were part of the fabric of things, a time before anyone had even heard of the expression "mission statement", and enlightened leaders guided by tradition and higher principles ruled their dominions, but then the image of Rupert Murdock's grubbing face at a meeting of investors appeared.

We're all fucked.

Or maybe not.

I think Slashdot needs a mission statement. Something between "To Boldly Go" and "Mostly Harmless", maybe?

Re:Well...

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

I've always wanted a paradoxical/ accusational mission statement.

Our mission statement: " We would like to issue this statement, that, for the record, we have no mission. So if your business gets totally screwed by our business relationship,we probably didn't plan for it to happen. Furthermore, it will probably be your fault. If you do have a mission, and you got totally screwed then its definitely your fault for failing to execute the mission."

Re:Well...

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

To Brazenly Split Infinitives, is to purposely offend any English teachers, that in their ineptitude, have mistakenly wandered into this honorable den of free thinkers. If collateral damage were to waywardly hit a grammar Nazi of the non grammar teacher type, then that would have to cheerfully be accepted as well as welcomed.

Re:Well...

[novakyu]

Nice job splitting the infinitive there, buddy. Sentence fragment! Sentence fragment!

Opt In Not Opt Out

[meehawl]

This is a salve. Things like this should be opt in, not opt out. Aside from ethical considerations, it would make the data a lot more reliable in terms of a self-selecting group of people that welcomed Facebook spying on their consumption habits. Presumably, these opt-inners would welcome marketing spam.

Re:Opt In Not Opt Out

[TubeSteak]

"On the opt-out page, it says that you will stop information from being posted to your profile," he noted. "It does not explicitly state that Facebook will stop collecting the information transmitted from third party sites."

Facebook user Tom Hessman added that Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook will still be receiving data from partner sites whether users opt out or not. Nuff said.
Facebook is still going to be receiving info from any site that signs up for the Beacon program.

My guess is Facebook's Beacon is going to be the DoubleClick of the social networking world. Maybe MySpace should get in on the action before Facebook corners the market on demographic information.

Mutually Assured Defamation

[Ckwop]

from the privacy-is-dead dept.

There's probably enough information about me on-line to uniquely identify me as an individual. There's also enough in what I have said on-line to date already to completely rule me out of any political position in this country.

However, I sometimes feel safe in the knowledge that everybody who has used the web has left a similar sort of trail. All this information will stay on the web for decades or perhaps even centuries.

Our privacy, it seems, is protected by the fact that if you dig hard-enough you can find dirt on anybody. Dirt is only good if you can use it and Google shows us just how many people have dirty linen that can be easily obtained.

When all this shakes out over the next twenty years and the Facebook generation grow-up and get careers, we may well find out that our privacy is protected by mutually assured defamation.

Simon

Just like last time...

[vaderhelmet]

During the mini-feeds debacle, Mark ended up conceding with a comment very similar to this. (http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=2208562130) If they were really interested in privacy concerns, they would have learned from the first time. To me, it seems like a way to see how far they can push the line before people will complain.

Re:Just like last time...

[sporkme]

Based on information Beacon has collected, you might be interested in the following items:
He-Man Underwear 3-pack, size 8
Lara Croft Bikini Poster
"Bride of Chucky" on VHS!

Ya, they "caved".

[fahrbot-bot]

From the TFA: "On the opt-out page, it says that you will stop information from being posted to your profile," he noted. "It does not explicitly state that Facebook will stop collecting the information transmitted from third party sites."

Meaning: We'll still collect information on you and do whatever we want with it, but it won't appear on your profile. Better? Yes. Much better? No.

How do you turn it off if you're not a member?

[bn0p]

From the article "Facebook came under withering criticism from its users and privacy advocates alike when a security researcher revealed that the ad system tracks user activities on third-party partner sites -- including the activities of people who never signed up with Facebook, who deactivated their accounts or who were not signed on to the site." [emphasis added]

What are they doing with the data of people who never signed up for Facebook in the first place? Is there a list of the 3rd-party sites that provide data to Facebook so that they can be avoided? I know that Facebook is not the only site to track user activity, but this underscores the need for a "Do Not track" list. Like that will happen anytime soon :D.


Never let reality temper imagination.

Boycott the Advertisers (list)

[jnadke]

Need to cut the problem at the source: the advertisers themselves. This wasn't easy to find in google, but here's a list of sites that have privacy-violating Beacon code embedded in them.

Boycott the following sites:

eBay
Fandango
College Humor
Busted Tees
iWon
Citysearch
Pronto.com
echomusic
Travelocity
Allposters.com
Blockbuster
Bluefly.com
CBS Sports
Dotspotter
ExpoTV
Gamefly
Hotwire
Joost
Kiva
Kongregate
LiveJournal
Live Nation
Mercantila
The NBA
The New York Times
Overstock.com
(RED)
Redlight
Seamless Web
Sony Online Entertainment
Sony Pictures
STA Travel
TheKnot
TripAdvisor
Travel Ticker
Typepad
viagogo
Vox
Yelp
WeddingChannel.com
Zappos

Source: http://www.facebook.com/press/releases.php?p=9166 (found from a blog)

TFA is wrong

[violet16]

TFA is quoting random "user Rob Tandry." Zuckerberg's announcement on the Facebook blog explicitly says they won't collect info when you turn Beacon off:

if you turn off Beacon, then Facebook won't store those actions even when partners send them to Facebook.

Re:TFA is wrong

[novakyu]

The only problem is ... you only have their word for it. This is the same people who, after repenting the privacy-invading "features" of News Feed, made the exact same (if not much worse) privacy-destroying add-on to that feature. Do you really trust them? I know I don't.

Now, if we agree that we can't trust these guys to tell the truth like it is, can you really trust them not to collect the information? What he says is "facebook won't store the info when external sites send it to them". That reads to me like: "Yes, sheep, don't worry about this mysterious communication to facebook.com when you are browsing on eBay. They are probably sending us all your personal, private actions, but we swear solemnly that we will not use or sell this very lucrative information."

As far as I am concerned (until someone either hacks into or raids Facebook servers without their notice and does a full investigation), they are still collecting and storing your information. They have proven over and over again that they have no integrity, and unless they say something like, "if you opt out, we will make sure to notify external websites not to send us your information," that is, something you can verify to be true, whatever they are telling is at worst a damned lie, and at best, half truth.

Re:TFA is wrong

[gordguide]

Maybe it's just semantics, but I can't really agree with your conclusion.

" ... they won't collect info ..." does not equal " ... won't store those actions ... " in my understanding of the English language.

As I read it, what happens is first they collect the identifiable data, then they might do some real-time stuff with it, then they throw the identifiable data away, probably keeping whatever aggregate info they glean from the real-time processing.

Essentially they promise to not store it but they most certainly do admit they will continue to collect it, and they are silent on whether they do anything with it as far as compiling non-identifiable statistics with it.

I hope Facebook users aren't buying into the lie

[erroneus]

There will be changes to terms of service or some other nonsense that people will blindly click "yes" to and all of it will be for naught.

There's simply too much money to be made from advertising and selling information to ignore! That's why CableTV started playing commercials even though it was originally sold to be "commercial free."

They can't resist the evil... the greed... "the corporate obligation." Adobe's "ads in PDF" is another fine example of crap they can't seem to resist. And the fact is, while people are sometimes vocal enough about some things, there's enough people out there who don't care enough to complain that nothing gets done.

About-face

[creativeHavoc]

This is the response I recieved when telling them I wanted to be able to turn off Beacon before I was "reported on"

Hi,

Thanks for your feedback about Facebook Beacon, it has definitely helped us make some changes to the product that we hope will provide you with a better experience on Facebook. Beacon was designed to help you share all the interesting things that you are doing outside of Facebook with your friends. Just like you have full control over your information on Facebook, you decide whether or not you want Beacon stories to be published and from which site.

Your feedback has made it clear that Beacon can be kind of confusing. To fix this, we are clarifying the way we inform you about a Beacon story before you decide whether or not you'd like to publish it on Facebook. In addition, we're working on making the sites that offer Beacon more visible to you, both on Facebook and through visual cues, so you can determine which specific sites you can publish stories from. Also, we're providing more information on how Beacon works through a new tutorial and expanded help pages.

We are trying to provide you with new meaningful ways, like Beacon, to help you connect and share information with your friends. Thanks for taking the time to express your opinions about our products. There isn't currently a way to block all sites before you've been sent any stories, but we'll keep it in mind for a future improvement. Please keep the feedback coming as we continuously work to improve your Facebook experience.

Thanks for contacting Facebook,

Ryann
Customer Support Representative
Facebook

That's a pretty big change from what Mark was saying in his blog post if you ask me. That being said, the big problem is, all I have turned off is Facebook's reporting of the sites I visit. I essentially hit a switch that says "Track me, but dont let me know what you are getting!" I wonder if I should turn it back on, so I can at least keep tabs on it.

Also, I wonder if I will still see what sites have reported back to facebook with my information on the settings page, even though I have turned it off.

Re:Does this violate advertisers' privacy policies

[jnadke]

As far as I understand Beacon is merely some AJAX code that resides within the affiliates webpage.

Your own computer gets this code, and communicates with Facebook directly, looking at your cookies to see if you're affiliated with Facebook. Since the transfer is local you can block it, but still these websites have the malicious AJAX code residing within their pages.

You have to block "http://www.facebook.com/beacon/*", which can be done using the FireFox BlockSite plugin, among other methods.

Be that as it may...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't say as I trust them. I don't use Facebook and I don't intend to, but I added this to my ad filters after the last story:

http*://*facebook.com/beacon/*

Unless you want to use that "feature" I don't see how it can hurt.

It's Too Little, Keep Protesting

[Robert Chapin]

Facebook is still collecting the information it shouldn't have. The fact that users can opt to not have it broadcast to their friends means almost nothing in terms of privacy.

Blocking the Beacon

[louisadkins]

There seem to be a number of sites (ala Google) that show Beacon can (at least, right now) be blocked by adding " http://facebook.com/beacon/* " to your anti-adware/blocker plugins.