November 10, 2007...10:25 am
Facebook’s Cruel Intentions - Beacon equals NO opt out - itsReal
It seems facebook is adopting the google approach, all this while i very happily use Google gmail and yes along with it comes ads, I don’t mind at all becuase occassionly somthing interesting pops out at me… however those that are concerned about privacy (hahah in facebook) might be concerned over Beacon…
“Facebook’s business profiles are much more exclusive than MySpace’s, which have been an attractive marketing platform for many small and local businesses. Facebook executives have said that only “real businesses” will be allowed to have profile pages on their site.”
..However Om Malik laments below…
Facebook’s Cruel Intentions
It has been 48 hours since I asked Facebook to clarify the point about whether a user’s data is still being passed to them from their web partners even after the user chooses to opt out of Beacon.
I’ve since given it a lot of thought and decided that I was not being judgmental in my previous post. Here, after all, is what Mark Zuckerberg told Portfolio.
- “The ads are going to feel like content to a lot of people.”
- “There is no opting out of advertising.”
Scary, isn’t it? Anyway, Nate Weiner, writing on Idea Shower, is also worried about Beacon — and he’s come to a similar conclusion: Any opt out is that of perception and publishing. (He came to this conclusion while playing games over on Kongregate.)
The problem however is, that even though you can choose whether or not it is made public that you visited these sites, Facebook still has the data regardless of your privacy settings. Now I don’t mean to sound like I’m tin-foil-hat-wearing paranoid, but that does seem to encroach a little past what Facebook’s role in my life should be.
Weiner (via Deep Jive Interests) has suggestions on how to avoid the whole Beacon thing — you need to use this Firefox plugin. My view is this: Let’s not use the 44 sites that have partnered with Facebook till each one puts a public disclosure on their site saying that no data is being passed to it.
It is going to be hard living without some of these big giants, but in most cases there are options. For instance, Fandango, which is owned by Comcast (CMCSA), is not going to get any business from me — 777 Film is a good alternative. Blockbuster (BBI) gets the boot, and eBay (EBAY)? Okay maybe I am being a little paranoid!
And as far as Facebook is concerned, I am still waiting for their clarifications.
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