Facebook responds to MoveOn criticism of ad program
This post was updated at 8:03 PM PT to provide additional comment from MoveOn.org.
Facebook issued a statement on Tuesday afternoon in response to online activist group MoveOn.org's charge that its "Beacon" advertising program is a violation of users' privacy.
"We encourage feedback from our users on new products," the Facebook statement read, "but in this case, the MoveOn.org-led group misrepresents how Facebook Beacon works. Beacon gives users an easy way to share relevant information from other sites with their friends on Facebook."
Beacon, which is part of Facebook's new social advertising strategy, broadcasts information about members' activity on third-party partner sites to their friends' "News Feeds." MoveOn's campaign has cited problems with the program ranging from its potential to reveal a user's entire holiday shopping list to the possibility that it might expose sensitive information that could put someone at risk.
Facebook's statement stressed that because this information is not public, it isn't an invasion of privacy. "Information is shared with a small selection of a user's trusted network of friends, not publicly on the Web or with all Facebook users," the statement explained. "Users also are given multiple ways to choose not to share information from a participating site, both on that site and on Facebook."
MoveOn.org spokesman Adam Green was quick to provide an additional response. "If Facebook's argument is that sharing private information with hundreds or thousands of someone's closest 'friends' is not the same as making that information 'public,' that shows how weak Facebook's argument is," Green said in an e-mail. "Facebook users across the nation are outraged that the books, movies, and gifts they buy privately on other sites are being displayed publicly without permission--and it's time for Facebook to reverse this massive privacy breach."
- Topics:
-
News
- Tags:
-
Facebook,
-
Beacon,
-
privacy,
-
MoveOn.org,
-
activism,
-
social networking,
-
advertising
- Bookmark:
- Digg
- Del.icio.us
I can understand how having to opt out of the RSS feed for each site individually could be annoying... and facebook could fix that with a simple feature allowing users to opt out of Beacon all together... but why does MoveOn care? Did one of their employees read an RSS feed stating that they were getting a crappy gift for Christmas?
Maybe they're just bankrupt after that NYT ad. That thing had to be expensive.
friggin time in 5 years) and when I logged on to my facebook
account today I was apparently "sponsoring" "American
Gangster" with no interaction on my part.
The result? I'll buy my tickets at the theater from now on and
facebook can kiss my ass!
I know I am not the only one who is freaked out by this massive
invastion of privacy.
Maybe the bush administration is sponsoring facebook?
Once personnal information have been spilled, there is no way to get it back. People will understand the implications years later, once it's too late for them.
http://privacy.cs.cmu.edu/courses/dp1/refs/facebook/FaceBook.pdf
their site's popularity.
There is a growing number of Facebook competitors and this is a
sure fire way of encouraging their users to go somewhere else.