Facebook Caves To Privacy Protests Over Beacon 95
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.'"
Thank god (Score:3, Insightful)
Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Thank god (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well... (Score:1, Insightful)
Opt In Not Opt Out (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Thank god (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Opt In Not Opt Out (Score:5, Insightful)
Facebook user Tom Hessman added that Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook will still be receiving data from partner sites whether users opt out or not.
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.
Re:Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
I hope Facebook users aren't buying into the lie (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Thank god (Score:2, Insightful)
If i want a dam app ill install it myself...
Re:Thank god (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:what happens on the Internet stays on the Inter (Score:1, Insightful)
Didn't take long did it? (Score:1, Insightful)
Or am I the only one who sees some correlation and causation there?
Re:Thank god (Score:3, Insightful)
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...