Already it bugs me that Amazon tracks the things I look at and tries to tell me what else I should buy. But Facebook’s latest outrage is really just beyond beyond. Can you say “class action”? I knew you could.
Evidently, with Facebook Beacon, companies can add a few lines of code to their websites that will allow the company to publish the actions the user took while on their site to that user’s Facebook profile (buying, adding things to wishlists, etc.). According to Facebook, users will be “alerted that [the] website is sending [the info] to their profile and have a chance to opt out.” However, it doesn’t look like it’s working that way! Apparently, people are getting to their Facebook profiles and seeing things like a list of movies they added to their Blockbuster queues on their profiles…
Do you really want the fact that you are renting Prison Girls made public?
There’s all this noise about Beacon right now, and it’s happening just at the moment when Francophilia is starting to generate some interest among advertisers who’d like to reach the site’s Francophile members. I’m sure there will be advertisers who’d love to get their hands on our mailing list, but it ain’t gonna happen.
Some people still have principles.
Just because so many of us choose to publicize things about ourselves and our lives in various ways on the Internet doesn’t give anyone the right to make those choices for us. Personally, I’m going to find out if companies are using Beacon code before I shop. If they do, I’m taking my business elsewhere.
And I don’t even use Facebook.
I’ll try to remember to raise this over on Francophilia somewhere, but I’m wondering if we shouldn’t consider making our Francophilia blogs and forum posts “members only”. The stuff I post there I think of as being for that community only and not for the rest of the world, but perhaps this might make the network less appealing to advertisers who probably will be attracted by a potentially larger body of customers. Hmm. Interesting to think of a community as an advertising target.
I’m sorry, what did you say? You lost me on the big penis icon – I’m going to hang out and look at it for a bit, if you don’t mind.
;)
Donavan, you are a Renaissance man. People have been trying to figure out the best way to make money off of social networks since they came into being. (Just so you know, what I have planned for Francophilia is not about getting rich… More on that later.) I don’t know if we can make the blogs and forums private. We are limited by the software we use, but I’ll check it out. The thing is, if potential members can read the blogs and see the variety of interesting material and personalities, they might be more inclined to join than otherwise (and it’s only in the blogs that the personalities are really evident at this point, plus, non-members can’t look at profiles). That’s kind of what I was thinking from the start. It’s still so early, I will probably wait and see how it evolves before making any changes to that unless there’s a member campaign to do so. You can always mark your individual blog entries “private” and only people on your friends list can read those.
Claudia!! You didn’t grow up in the US, did you?! I actually googled the word “shame” and went to the images. Figured I’d find somebody nude and trying to hide something that way. Glad you enjoyed the picture!
“Add 3 lines of code and lose all privacy”…
In these ‘we log everything’ times Facebook lives up to its reputation: a privacy invading social networking tool that should be avoided.
People can make choices on how much of their private life is available online. Social networking sites are continuously trying to push these limits in order to cash in on people’s lives.
Don’t let them.
Francophilia seems to have found the right balance: the users are still in charge.