You know, I was thinking about joining Facebook

[mdlbear]

... but not after this privacy disaster. (via boing boing) There's an earlier article here.

For those who just want the high-order bits, the fuss is about "Facebook's 'Beacon' advertisements, which post information about users' activity on partner sites (movie rentals, purchases from online retailers) onto their friends' News Feed." There's an opt-out, but it's well hidden and you have to opt out separately for each merchant.

Note to vendors: if I buy something and don't mind letting the universe know I've bought it, I'll blog about it. Much of the time I mind a whole lot, so it's my damned choice, not yours. If Facebook ever gets its metaphorical face out of its metaphorical arse, I'll reconsider setting up an account.

Comments

[tiggerypum.livejournal.com]

Uhm, maybe it's just me, but I have yet to have even considered making a purchase from a facebook ad. They seem like junk, I don't even read them. Now I'm going to go look for the opt out. I remember though noise about something requiring an opt *out* at Yahoo also that was a bit hard to find.

So I guess I figure that as long as people are watching and they will make noise - that *shrug* it's always that danger online.

I clicked on privacy, I clicked on external sites:

Show your friends what you like and what you're up to outside of Facebook. When you take actions on the sites listed below, you can choose to have those actions sent to your profile.

Please note that these settings only affect notifications on Facebook. You will still be notified on affiliate websites when they send stories to Facebook. You will be able to decline individual stories at that time.

No sites have tried sending stories to your profile

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I have no sites listed to 'opt out' from and if it started happening I should _see it_ -- according to this.

Is this a change? I don't know. I'll keep an eye on it.

[jilara.livejournal.com]

I gave up on MySpace because the site was too hard to use and too full of needless bells and whistles (often literally). I was considering checking Facebook, but after I read this little debacle, I decided "no thanks" for that one. But then, I've got enough real-life social networking I don't need to do it elsewhere, currently.