Facebook Users Complain of New Ad-Based Tracking 173
Tech.Luver noted a story about facebook users complaining over ads where their shopping habits are shared with their friends as if they are endorsing products. The neatest part is that you can opt out- if you click a box that disappears after 20 seconds... wait to long, and they assume you are totally fine with it.
What do you expect on a free service? (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally, I think it's a fair trade. What do you expect when you put all your personal information in to a web-site that is free to use? They have to make money some how and the easiest way to do that is to sell your information on to other people or come to agreements with other companies to find ways to market to you.
If you don't like that then don't use Facebook!
If you want your own soap box under your own rules then get your own site. You can even run these out of your own house now provided you're with a civilised ISP.
Simon
What happens when... (Score:4, Insightful)
What happens when someone shops at an adult store and there are minors on their friends list...?
Re:Facebook users... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What do you expect on a free service? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I guess accuracy is too much to hope for (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope you are not suggesting that I wait until after a site sends something to my profile to have means to stop it? This would be ok, if you alone are notified of the attempt before it can be successfully carried out. What if someone doesn't notice the little blip they put up on the external site? Can they still block others from seeing something even if its only once? I won't have to worry about this because my account is registered with an email I don't use for shopping, so I am asking because I can only find out from others experiences. That at least is the point most people here are getting at.
Anything other than having the default be no consent, there seems to be something wrong with this model. I think this may mean people will start shopping with a non-facebook registered email address.
My solution from a while ago was to create a new email address for every site I register with (it is a mail forwarder - i don't actually check dozens of email addresses). This gives me the ability to delete the address if it starts getting too much spam (selling of email addresses was one of the original reasons for me to do this). a sideeffect is that it hinders (though does not block) sharing of my info amongst businesses.
Why I quit Facebook and you should too (Score:5, Insightful)
The first whiff of displeasure I got when using Facebook was when people could tag me in photos without my permission and have them display on my profile. Understandably, there's lots of pictures one would probably not want the world to see, especially during a job search. I did eventually find the option to disable this "feature", but it was many months afterwards. Similarly, I expect there's a way to disable this privacy-infringing commercial thing, but the simple fact is, it's turned on by default for users, and you have to actively figure out how to disable it.
That's not how this kind of stuff should work. It should be opt-in, not opt-out. Am I supposed to babysit my Facebook account into the indefinite future, disabling each new feature as it comes out, hopefully in time to prevent revealing information that I didn't want revealed? No thanks. I'll just quit Facebook. I did, and you should too. The more people who put up with this kind of crap, the more emboldened they will be to keep doing it.
Re:What do you expect on a free service? (Score:3, Insightful)
I was fine with being shown ads, bandwidth and server racks ain't free after all and they gotta be paid for somehow right? I started getting uneasy when they moved to targeted ads. The idea of software scanning my profile for keywords is unpleasant but I rationalized that perhaps the information wasn't being sent off-site or being stored in any permanent sense. But after Microsoft bought into Facebook, that is when I really started paying attention to what the site was doing with MY information. (As far as I am concerned, even if I chose to share it with some site, it remains MY info. I do not agree to sharing it with "marketing affiliates" and the like unless you explicitly list the names and business addresses of the companies involved AND spell out what their data policies are.)
The idea of taking my profile information and perhaps my business relationship data and using it to sell to my friends is pretty f&^%ing sleazy in my book and I flat out won't put up with it. IMHO, it means the marketers are banking on my reputation to sell their crap. And it probably IS crap, stuff I would never recommend to a friend or family member. If it was a worthwhile product, it'd already be getting word of mouth referral no?
Worse yet, the agreements and descriptions carefully leave open the possibility of off site marketing as well. The example I read used Amazon. I list books and reading as among my interests in Facebook, Amazon targets ads at me, scrapes my name and profile image and uses that to target ads to everyone in my friends list. Then if one of those people click the ad, or even browse to Amazon while the ad's cookie is still in their cache then they will be presented with a dynamically created page that includes whatever information about me that Amazon was able to collect and thinks might increase sales to the visitor. Since Facebook insists on using real names, it is fairly easy for Amazon to combine my profile data with any sales data they acquired when doing business with me. Now, in my case, I don't mind much if say my Mom is shown what books I have purchased or shown interest in at Amazon, but there are some people on my friends list that I wouldn't want to share my reading habits with. Worse yet, my name is a fairly common one (the name of a former king of England and an occupational surname), common enough that even in the small town I am in there are three other men with similar enough names that there is occasionally confusion. If I am Richard Wright and there is a Rick Wright or Dick Wright in the same town who also uses Facebook, do I want my mom being shown Rick or Dick's book preferences thinking they are mine? Probably not....
So, in the end, I quit. I also messaged everyone in my list, explained as briefly as possible *why* I was quitting and urged them all to do their own research and think for themselves. I had hoped that a few others would take this as seriously as I and quit as well.
The more cynical (experienced?) among you will have already predicted the response I got. Not one person on my list actually quit over this. Only one actually bothered to even click the news link I provided. (And he didn't even read all of it, said it was "boring news stuff")Three people actually responded to my message. Two to lambaste me for making too much ado about the whole mess and one actually complained about my spamming her. (I sent one mass message, when anyone replied, she got the replies from these strangers in her box as well.) As for the rest? a vast echoing silence was the only response I got. What really pisses me off about the whole thing is two things: First, my profile was not the only place you can find personal information about me. Several relatives have pages and they are not always as careful about what they say as I would like. Ironically enough, I can't go see what they have posted about me unless I log in, but ad
Re:Facebook users... (Score:5, Insightful)
Facebook's Tactical Advantage (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme?entry=social_networking_meme [realmeme.com]
Once Facebook hits an inflection point, its scope of influence is bounded, i.e. predictable.
Facebook needs to change the game to increase their chances of winning.
At this point, I give them a 50/50 chance.
There's power in coalitions (see IBM's strategy with Eclipse, Sun's strategy with Java & JCP).
If I owned Facebook, I'd redo the Facebook API by combining some of the ideas of OpenSocial, then build a coalition along the lines of the Java Community Process to manage it, abdicating 49% of the power and responsibility to other companies. If Facebook does that now, they can leverage their current development community and possibly force Google's hand. If they wait, the true extent of their power will eventually be revealed and challenged.
Give us the List of Companies involved (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it would be very important to promote a list of online retailers who it's NOT safe to shop with. Ignore the fact that Facebook are showing the information where they shouldn't be, the retailers who are offering the information out in the first place are the ones to really be angry with.
And if it isn't in cooperation, and there's some kind of stealth applet in the browser (as it sounds like there might be) listening in on third-party site traffic then that sounds like either a browser security hole (which should be patched) or some kind of malware that should be removed from systems.
Unless, this is just some overblown incident of user stupidity where they are telling facebook more than they should be. I haven't seen the thing in action myself.
Jolyon
Re:What do you expect on a free service? (Score:3, Insightful)
Bullshit. We all have the right to voice our opinions regardless of how much we pay for a service. Besides, I'm sure Facebook would rather hear complaints from users than have a mass exodus for no apparent reason. I know from first hand experience how frustrating it is to find out that there's been some problem with a site/service for weeks or months that could have been fixed in a matter of minutes if someone had said something.
Re:What do you expect on a free service? (Score:5, Insightful)
Cry more.
What facebook is doing is contemptible. But if you can't take a stand against something like this that requires such a minor inconvenience... Good Lord! All it takes is for when you're exchanging information that you explain you're against facebook and you give a phone number or email address or domain name or aim name. Anything else they can use to get in touch with you. Most people will admire you for taking a stand, it shows strength. If someone really wants to speak to you in the future they will make the necessary arrangements. What's going to happen when someone really steps on your civil liberties or wrongs you in some way like, oh I don't know, the governement and you're required to make a real democratic sacrifice in order to fix things?
Are you going to sit there as you do now and cry like a little baby about the inconvenience it would bring into your life?
There was a time students would get out and protest against illegal or amoral wars, now they care more about their latte or facefuckmeintheassbook.
Re:Opting Out (Score:5, Insightful)
I think closing ones account and would be an infinitely preferable option. Yours only resolves this one issue. But what about the next one? And the one after that?
They say don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, and that's fine, but I think the facebook baby went down the drain a while ago, and all that's left is a mass of humanity puttering around in its own dirty bathwater.
Re:What do you expect on a free service? (Score:4, Insightful)
At my university, this doesn't fly for legitimate communications. Facebook is quickly gaining on myspace for the electronic embodiment of tackiness. A phone call is best, an instant message has the benefit of being...well...instant. Even email works. A message on Facebook is like a Fisher Price email.
I don't buy the social networking argument either. Facebook is great if you want a huge number of 'friends' to show off, or really want to give someone a 'pet duck' or 'sixpack of beer'. It's not bad to get a glimpse at what someone might be like based on a profile, but the usefulness pretty much ends there. I've never had a physical relationship that involved sending a 'super poke' (at least not on facebook), or formed a business connection by sending someone a virtual 'small box with a hole in it'.
Of course your mileage may differ, and I'm getting ready to graduate, so the freshman crowd may see things differently, but particularly with the direction that facebook is heading, anyone who uses it as a serious means of communication is just hindering themselves.
Re:that's not the issue, though? (Score:1, Insightful)
*waits a minute before hitting submit - stupid slashdot filters*
Re:Facebook users... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What a bunch of whiney bitches! (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't agree with the way they use information, and coincidentally I don't have an account with facebook. Seems pretty simple to me.
Re:What do you expect on a free service? (Score:3, Insightful)
Despite my above post, I DO actually recommend having a facebook, and myspace account (haven't used linkedin), created with a junk email address. I check the sites about once a month, and every so often I actually am contacted by a friend from the past, or someone from school wanting to get in touch with me.
As long as you distance yourself from them, they're handy. It's the people who try to pass them off as legitimate mainstream communication who are either hindering themselves, or as another poster said, 14 years old and were just allowed on the net.