Facebook Retreats on Online Tracking 95
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.'"
How big a marginal minority? (Score:1)
Good! (Score:3, Insightful)
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Seriously though, in Soviet Russia, Facebook deletes you.
Re:Good! (Score:5, Informative)
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To date, none of these attempts through any of the communication channels have yielded me so much as an acknowledgment of receipt, let alone any action.
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Re:Good! (Score:4, Informative)
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Maybe this assumption is wrong, but I don't think Facebook would keep a full version history, but instead probably keep the latest x versions (lets say 5) of your profile. Then perhaps the best way to 'erase' most of your profile is to cycle garbage through your profile before you leave. Just fill your profile with new garbage everyday for a month or two. Hopefully by then facebook has n
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Trust but falsify (Score:2)
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Re:Good! (Score:5, Insightful)
A guess based on what I heard; because the vocal minority scared the partners more than it scared Facebook. The main shopping drive right now is Christmas; making this the absolute worst time to introduce a tool that publishes your shopping habits to your family and friends. Retailers get that, even if thick-headed social networking bosses don't.
If a couple of retailers get grumpy - or even just one of sufficient size (ie. Amazon), then Facebook would definitely want to tone it down, and try again in the new year.
This is all about business, kids.
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Facebook don't delete profiles. (Score:1, Redundant)
Tag it !aminority (Score:1)
Is there really much Slashdot/Facebook overlap? (Score:2)
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Except that most of the users I know refer to that image as their "screen saver".
Help me.
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Help me.
If they also refer to the computer itself as the 'Hard Drive', then it's too late for you.
Oh wait, they say these things to me too.
Nooooooo!!!!!11111one
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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?"
I'm on it. As with others in this crowd, though, my presence is minimal. I'm there so friends/relatives from out of town can view the latest videos of the pups. At the time I signed up, I had made a comment that at least Facebook was more pretentious than MySpace. I wouldn't make that joke anymore.
Funny thing is; the beacon thing was giving me pause - and more from a data-mining point-of-view than that it would share them with my friends. What, I don't want my friends to know where I shop, but I'm
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Re:Is there really much Slashdot/Facebook overlap? (Score:5, Insightful)
To quote one of my roommates, "Blogs? Aren't those something high school kids do?".
But she checks Facebook several times a day. If you want to stay in touch with people you have to use the medium that the people you want to stay in touch with use. Sure there's a pretty bad signal/noise ratio on all of these social networking sites. Not wanting to use a (non special interest based) social networking platform because too many people use it, seems a little self defeating.
Also, the OP has obviously not been in college in the past 5 years. They practically give you a Facebook account with your student ID these days.
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Not Troll (Score:1)
Seems like someone just disagreed with what he said.
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There are a lot of very intelligent, highly competent people with a lot of technical knowledge here, certainly. But there are also a lot of completely ignorant technology newbies as well. The worst thing about it is that a lot of people who have a slashdot account think it automatically makes them part of some computing elite, and that alone gives them license to comment on things they have no clue about.
Seriously take off the blinders sometime and
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I've got a 4-digit slashdot ID (whatever that counts for) and I use Facebook intensively, primarily to keep in touch with my friends from high school, college, and grad school.
The vast majority of my techie frien
i can see it now... (Score:1, Funny)
Invade your privacy? (cancel) or (allow)?
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New Social Software (Score:1)
translation... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Better translation: (Score:1)
"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."
Sssshhh. Facebook will track your /. post. (Score:5, Funny)
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
PR Babble to English Translation (Score:4, Insightful)
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...
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Don't think like a user---think like Facebook does. In particular, think of each of your "friend" as an audience for your anti-Facebook agenda. Rather than closeting yourself off, use their tools against them. So, Facebook has an intrusive,
Let's all say goodbye to Facebook (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Let's all say goodbye to Facebook (Score:5, Insightful)
Facebook, unfortunately, appears to have been extremely calculated and crafty in its decisions to roll out new features, each time building upon the level of addiction that its existing users have already reached and the larger social "necessity" of being on Facebook, especially among college and high school kids.
By the time they allowed high school students (and later anyone) to join, Facebook was already fairly established with students, who already had enough "invested" in their accounts and knew that their real friends were in the same situation. The introduction of news feed may have angered those with concerns about privacy, but certainly not enough to make a significant number of users angry enough to leave. For those that did stay, News Feed reinforces the necessity of being on Facebook, because once you do have access to that kind of information about your friends, it's hard to turn it down.
This Beacon situation feels very much like News Feed, except that the impact on solidifying Facebook "addiction" will be less marked. Facebook and its features just become too important to most users (in college, not having an account can get you some very strange looks), and Zuckerberg et al. will continue to use that to their advantage in building their revenue stream.
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I tried creating the page. Two 'features' really popped out at me. First, they have the promotion tool. It's a paid (per click or per view) banner thingy that once AGAIN USES OTHER PEOPLE'S PROFILE NAMES AND PICTURES to promote the ba
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Help I need advice from somebody (Score:1, Interesting)
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Kudos to Facebook (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
One of the issues (Score:5, Informative)
Further down, the reason Facebook changed the policy:
Hard to be an ad-supported site if the advertisers won't advertise...
Sure, it was for his wife... (Score:1)
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I hate when that happens.
Result don't buy stuff advertised on facebook (Score:1)
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This isn't a matter of simply not clicking on banner ads or affiliate links. This is collaboration to track your
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Or not turn on cookies...
BBC News (Score:2)
how to stop beacon (Score:2, Informative)
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And there is a followup: http://www.ideashower.com/blog/facebook-beacon-two-weeks-later/ [ideashower.com]
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misspent energy (Score:3, Insightful)
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Virtual networks such as Facebook demonstrate a major change in western society:
You have no idea who's your next door neighbor (... or if he's alive or dead) but you've got "virtual" friends living on the other side of the globe.
One can only speculate why we, as a society choose to create a "virtual" society instead of actual one - but I can safely speculate that such a society will be less inclined to go on a 1,000,000 head march in the middle of winter to change anything they believe
Not only annoys the users, but makes feeds useless (Score:1)
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...
So are they are going to track all my purchases? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:So are they are going to track all my purchases (Score:1)
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Just the tip of the privacy implication iceberg (Score:3, Insightful)
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!
this matters how? (Score:1)
Not worried. (Score:2, Funny)
on sharing of information, and newsfeed ads (Score:1)
See, this guy is missing the whole point. Of course people want to share stuff. But they want to share it on what they perceive to be their terms, not on some company's terms!
Anyways, this change to Beacon is good news, even tho the info is still sent to Facebook's marketing database, and there is
According to their terms and conditions (Score:3, Informative)
By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.
You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.
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.
Nope. (Score:1)
The text of the terms is almost exclusively framed in terms of copyri
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but there may still be other laws that restrict the use of the content.
Such as?
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.
But more likely, permission can be established through a clickable ToS. Not sure if that has been tested in court, but if it were, I'd bet on the court siding with Facebook's ToS, rather than the user, unless the user is a minor. And what does valuable consideration have to do with anything? People give away the right to publish or broadcast their image for nothing, every single day.
The wost part isn't that they display the info (Score:2)
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 bu
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However, it is conceivable, and quite possible for sites to do the sending to facebook from the back-end (using a cgi script, for example), effectively removing you from the loop. All this would require is reading your cookie once and associating your username on said site with your facebook account. And such informaton could be sent without facebook displaying it. You w
I'm missing something here.... (Score:1)
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
Well... (Score:1)