Facebook Retreats on Online Tracking

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.'"

Good!

But too late for me...I already deleted my Facebook profile when they launched this abominable feature.

Re:Good!

But too late for me...I already deleted my Facebook profile when they launched this abominable feature.

You merely deactivated it. It's still there, all the data has been retained. You could go back and reactivate it tomorrow and find yourself staring at the same profile you had before you "deleted" it.

Re:Good!

From the T&Cs: "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, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, 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." http://www.facebook.com/terms.php [facebook.com]

Re:Good!

If the number of people annoyed were so marginal, why didFacebook react so quickly?

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.

Tag it !aminority

New account; I'm miserable at managing all my log/pass combos.

Is there really much Slashdot/Facebook overlap?

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?"

Re:Is there really much Slashdot/Facebook overlap?

It always amuses me when people dismiss social networking sites by saying, "If I want a presence on the internet, I'll use a site that I built myself". Using a personal site/blog to keep in touch with people only works if all your friends read/write blogs and check their friends personal sites regularly.

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.

i can see it now...

"would not send messages about users' Internet activities without getting explicit approval each time"

Invade your privacy? (cancel) or (allow)?

New Social Software

Is there a stand alone program with the same features as these online sites? Something with custom privacy settings. A merger of email, chat, and file sharing doesn't seem that far fetched. Wasn't ICQ a lot like this? Its been a long time since I have seen the program.

translation...

Facebook Executives wrote: 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.

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.

Sssshhh. Facebook will track your /. post.

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

"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."

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...

Let's all say goodbye to Facebook

Facebook requires the good graces of its users to make money by selling the attention span of those users to advertisers. So what does Facebook do? Simple, piss off those very users it needs to make money.

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

Facebook requires the good graces of its users to make money by selling the attention span of those users to advertisers. So what does Facebook do? Simple, piss off those very users it needs to make money.

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.

Help I need advice from somebody

Our small startup company makes a successful online scientific app and management got it in their heads after talking to some of our investors that we need to drop everything and spend the next three months cramming "socialization" features into it. We have no time for this (we need to make performance and scalability improvements). I would prefer not to leave the job with its short commute, good pay, and free lunches. But everyone is drinking the Kool Aid, and nobody seems to realize that this fad is almost over. What do I do?

Kudos to Facebook

Well, I'll give Facebook points for once again responding fairly quickly and positively to complaints from their user base. In an age when most corporations treat customers as an irritation rather than a valued client this seems like a good thing.

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

As described in The Washington Post [washingtonpost.com]:

Sean Lane's purchase was supposed to be a surprise for his wife. Then it appeared as a news headline -- "Sean Lane bought 14k White Gold 1/5 ct Diamond Eternity Flower Ring from overstock.com" -- last week on the social networking Web site Facebook.

Without Lane's knowledge, the headline was visible to everyone in his online network, including 500 classmates from Columbia University and 220 other friends, co-workers and acquaintances.

And his wife.

Further down, the reason Facebook changed the policy:

Lane complained to Overstock. Company spokesman Judd Bagley said this week that on Nov. 21, Overstock abandoned its Beacon feature until Facebook changes its practice so that users must volunteer if they want to participate.

Hard to be an ad-supported site if the advertisers won't advertise...

Result don't buy stuff advertised on facebook

I assume ring in the story was bought by a Facebook ad, ergo don't buy stuff via the ad on Facebook. This was in the Wash Post today so could get widespread coverage. Especially young people can be quite fickle and could turn away from Facebook. All it can take is one slip up to lose your reputation, just another reminder of this.

BBC News

BBC News had an article about this today. It seems that informaton about your purchases, or product browsing history is sent to your friends and businesses. At this time of year, this could spoil one or two surprise Christmas presents.

how to stop beacon

I found this site: http://www.bspcn.com/2007/11/09/block-facebook-beacon/ [bspcn.com] with instructions on how to block beacon with firefox. I'm not sure how effective it is.

misspent energy

One day -- maybe -- Facebook users will get together and protest something really important. So much energy, so much potential...

Not only annoys the users, but makes feeds useless

I wasn't one of users that protested feeds. In fact, I *like* feeds. They let me keep up with my friends.

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?

Does this mean I have to stop buying porn over the internet?

Just the tip of the privacy implication iceberg

As mentioned here: http://securitymusings.com/article/202/facebook-ruining-christmas [securitymusings.com]:

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?

So, it's back to the good ol' fashioned methods of cyberstalking, rather than being simply handed all the information? *sigh* Back to LiveJournal for the Facebook freaky-followers...

Not worried.

I have a facebook account and I'm not worried at all. Why? Because I have no friends.

on sharing of information, and newsfeed ads

from TFA:

"Isn't this community getting a little hypocritical?" said Chad Stoller, director of emerging platforms at Organic, a digital advertising agency. "Now, all of a sudden, they don't want to share something?"

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 still no global opt-out. Actually the thing that still really bothers me is that when people do ok one of these notifications, or they "fan" a product w/ Facebook's new product pages service, ads pop up in newsfeeds for that product, using the user's picture. There's no way to opt out of these newsfeed ads, so this could get really annoying if people start clicking ok and/or becoming fans of a lot of products. I guess I could just de-friend any friend who does that, but that doesn't seem like the best solution.

According to their terms and conditions

When you post User Content to the Site, you authorize and direct us to make such copies thereof as we deem necessary in order to facilitate the posting and storage of the User Content on the Site.

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.

The wost part isn't that they display the info

...it's that they collect it in the first place.

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 business, and I intend to tell them exactly why.

I'm missing something here....

Isn't Facebook a vehicle FOR sharing personal information?

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 already see what sort of response that would elicit from the user though. Even more indignation.

Some people just don't get it. If you value your your privacy, stop shooting holes in the bottom of the boat by using social networking sites like this in the first place.

Well...

I bet you the real story is that they eventually figured out that what they were doing is quite likely illegal, but don't wish to admit so.

How big a marginal minority?

How big is 49.999%?

Re:Are people really this stupid?

People really are that stupid. Someone in my wife's Psychology program, who was doing her internship as a substance abuse counselor, was kicked out after posting details about her drunken weekend behavior.