NEWS: MoveOn.org Launches Anti-Facebook Campaign

GEEK: MoveOn.org Launches Anti-Facebook Campaign

"Why the Hell Was My Whole Holiday Shopping List Published in My Facebook News Feed?" That's what some Facebook users have been wondering ever since the site's new "social advertising strategy" started publishing information about members' activity on third-party partner sites to their friends' "News Feeds." In other words, Facebook users who make online purchases are finding that many of those transactions are showing up for everyone to see. Kind of sucks for people making "personal" purchases, or trying to surprise friends and family with holiday gifts.

Why does MoveOn.org care? They say that the program -- called "Beacon" -- is a major violation of privacy.

Beacon is not mandatory, and Facebook users can opt out, but that choice is well-hidden and only temporarily visible. MoveOn.org insists that Facebook needs to do a better job of informing and protecting their users. Facebook, of course, claims that MoveOn.org is misrepresenting the site feature. In response to MoveOn's attack, Facebook offered a statement saying that they had it all wrong.

You think the MoveOn gang bought that weak excuse? Everyone knows that many of the "friends" listed on social networking site profiles aren't the real deal. Not only that, but who even wants their true friends to have access to all of their purchases? I don't need my good friends or classmates to know that I got myself a copy of Sexually Transmitted Diseases: A Physician Tells You What You Need to Know. This should be the sort of thing that users choose to turn "on" instead of "off," and Facebook has a responsibility to make their users aware of new features like this before they go into effect.

Time for me to change my settings.

shit! why couldn't you have posted this before i bought all the parts i'm going to build my dirty bomb with?!?

Reported.

I'm still not in the loop of how facebook manages to grep this information... do you have to enter in anything to the program? or does it just stif through the cookies on your hard drive?

They have to be matching name/address combinations. An easy way to avoid a match-up would be to remove any information from your profile that they could use to combine your name with another piece of information.

Use a different e-mail address on Facebook than you do when ordering stuff online, don't have your address listed in Facebook, phone number, etc.

Facebook needs to drop this system period, but until they do (if they do), there are ways that people can avoid having their shopping habits displayed to their friends.

I especially love this bit of their privacy policy:

Of course, grossly exaggerated are the rumours of links between Facebook and "disbanded" guv'ment agencies that exist to collect as much information on citizens as possible.

Precisely why they know only my name, e-mail address, and where I went to school: stuff that's required to join. The rest, they can stuff it.

MoveOn.org can stuff their self righteous heads up their fat asses.

Of the 5 groups of people in the world I despise the most, they're close to the top.

edit: and it took me all of 2 clicks to turn this feature off. So you can take your "Beacon is not mandatory, and Facebook users can opt out, but that choice is well-hidden and only temporarily visible" and shove it. Maybe you should learn how to read.

Did you have anything to say about the article?

Yeah, I hear MoveOn made Lakenheath, England into a nightmarish hellscape where the living envy the dead.

Jesus Christ, man. Eat some bran. Get some fiber into your diet, posthaste.

It sounds like you're wound up a little too tightly over this particular organization. What did they do to you? Is it worth causing yourself a stroke over them?

Sorry, but when I pass a crowd of people on the way to work, several of them wearing MoveOn.org shirts, carrying signs that call me a baby killer, among other things, I tend to have a less than favorable outlook on them.


This is just ANOTHER example of Michael Moore's pet group of loser protesters meddling in other peoples business for the sake of publicity.

They aren't going to be dropping this anytime soon.

I recently did a demo for a CEO of a Fortune 500 company on what could be done with Facebook as far as advertising/tracking, and they were nearly shitting their pants at the possibilities. They are going to pour a lot of money into a project on the FB. And we all know, when there is money to be had, it is unlikely they will stop.

I'm glad I just deleted my Face book account. They should have left it the way it was three years ago. Now it just, well, sucks.

but by you lumping everyone who supports moveon with those protesters arent you doing the same thing as people who assume all soldiers are baby killers?

HAH! Facebook beat ya to it!


...aww...

I'm confused... As far as I can tell either this article is chock full of shit* or I have no idea how to use teh internets. Or the CIA really does own facebook and is preventing me from seeing this "bacon" they installed on my computer.

Or the article was just taken from somewhere else on the internet three weeks ago like every other story I actually notice on the newswire these days, and the issue is already gone...

And I now too distrust and dislike Moveon.org, not that I ever cared in the first place...

*by "chock full of shit" I mean "possibly inaccurate" in a very polite and constructive way.

So basically you're saying this kind of practice is okay because MoveOn doesn't like it?

Anyway, I don't know how to shut this feature off. If I go into my privacy settings, this is the closest thing I can find.

So therefore I can't change anything, I guess.

Can we get some more specific examples of what's exactly happening?

The enemy of my enemy is my friend. I don't see any problem with it though. Facebook is a purely voluntary social network. You choose your friend, you choose what they're allowed to see. The argument that "not all of the profiles are for your friends" is pretty silly. If you don't want strangers seeing personal things about you, don't add them to your friends list. A little bit of common sense goes a very long way.

I would really expect nothing less from Mooreian sycophants though.

If you put something on Facebook (or MySpace, or SG, or anywhere else online) it is no longer private. Keep it off the internet if you don't want anyone knowing about it. That includes allowing someone elses system unlimited access to your online activities.

So, do you like Stalin better, or Hitler?

Oh I gt it... they broadcast your purchases for everyone to see... Is that supposed to make you happy? I'm not sure that feature is good for anything at all...

That would be a better analogy if there were any consequence to his fervid contrarianism. Since there isn't, though, he's effectively just indulging himself in anti-intellectual masturbation, full of sound and fury.

I think that's pretty shortsighted.. but more importantly, untrue. Sometimes "both sides" can be wrong. I don't like MoveOn for the record, either.

In my opinion it's nothing to do with "privacy" on a large scale level. I just think it's kind of stupid. I use Facebook mainly as an address book. I have people on there from work, I have friends and I have family. I rarely use it for much other than communicating and seeing what people are up to. I am not under the impression I have the "right" to use facebook or any nonsense like that. I, again, just think it's pretty stupid.

This feature is set to "on" by default, from what I gather, and it isn't something most people would expect the site to do. There isn't much precident for it, and this is the problem. It has nothing to do with "common sense". Do you really think that it is common sense to think that if I go buy some stuff online my friends on Facebook will be told about it? If tomorrow you logged into Suicide Girls and your friends had been informed over what you bought online would you feel that was to be expected? (I'm not asking if you'd care, but if you think that is something you'd expect).

And I can see why people who didn't know it would happen would feel like their privacy has been compromised.

I'd like to know what the newsfeed looks like, what these supposed "multiple ways" to stop it "both on that site and on Facebook" are... because MoveOn and Facebook are contradicting each other, and I don't know who is telling the truth. Who are these partners anyway?