Facebook recently had to pull their Beacon advertising program for a while due to inadequate privacy features.  They started the service off as having to opt- out on a case by case basis instead of giving the option of a complete opt-out.  However, i…

Last month you were all sweating Facebook as the second coming of the internet……now your calling them the devil.

So which one is it?

I’m not a facebook fanboy and i’m somewhat pleased to see them screw up this new ad platform. However it’s amazing to see how quickly the tide has turned and all of the sudden everyone is outraged.

Is there a list of Beacon partners up somewhere? Non-Americans at least might have a reasonable chance of avoiding using their sites, which might just help redefine the limits of what’s acceptable, corporations realizing via economic pressure just because it’s technically possible, it might not be the best idea.

Cheap trick to “hire” my friends (not that they get a dime) as door-to-door marketers, you wouldn’t do that in the real world would you? One way that Beacon could potentially have been useful AND more acceptable would have been to aggregate the data from your network and show that, not who, what & where on a newsfeed (idea provided free of charge

With Social Ads, these advertisements may eventually follow you around the web, which means that book on Tantric Love you just bought from Amazon will trigger crazy nasty ads not only on facebook but all over the web for you – not my idea of a great user experience (especially when you’re surfing the web with your kids).

Many people forget that Myspace (intermix) was on the verge of shutting down due to spyware lawsuits in New York when Fox picked them up (dirt cheap) and made all the headaches go away with a magic wand.

I recall an old latin saying: Nothing new under the Sun!

@66 Dave, yep, I noticed that it hasn’t changed from a default opt-out to opt-in. He is still trying to snare unsuspecting users into share their information unintentionally.

Plus he hasn’t said what will happen to all those other traffic being sent to facebook even if you aren’t a facebook user.

Great post. There is lots of truth to it.

@60 Anon

Yup. It’s interesting that Zuckerberg is spending shareholder money trying to keep his files closed, but, it’s OK to sell out your customers in such an unethical practice. Some people would say that is a double standard.

@Techcrunch
I don’t recall you doing a story about the public files that became available. Maybe I missed that one or is it that you decided not to run it knowing that if you did you’d never get access to Facebook insiders? If so, probably a good business move!

“At first we tried to make it very lightweight so people wouldn’t have to touch it for it to work. The problem with our initial approach of making it an opt-out system instead of opt-in was that if someone forgot to decline to share something, Beacon still went ahead and shared it with their friends.”

So, Mark, you’re either extremely slimy or extremely gullible. Lesson one when dealing with privacy issues pertaining to third-party involvement is OPT-IN. That is, of course, you’re one of those super aggressive direct marketing types that borders on fraudulent practices. (see: FREE CREDIT REPORT DOT COM!)

Advertisers won’t forget. This will have a very long echo.