MoveOn.org Launches Anti-Facebook Campaign

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"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. "The bottom line," MoveOn spokesman Adam Green said in an interview with CNET News.com, "is that no Facebook user should have their private purchases online posted for the entire world to see without their explicit opted-in permission."

It's true that Beacon advertisements are limited to the news feeds of the people on a user's friends list, but Green said that doesn't make a difference. He cited Facebook user testimonials that ranged from members who said their entire Christmas lists had been published on their News Feeds (spoiling many a surprise in the process) to student activists who were concerned that sensitive purchases might show up and result in serious consequences--"If a college kid rents Brokeback Mountain and some homophobic person on his campus sees that, that could be a real problem," he explained. 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. "We encourage feedback from our users on new products," the Facebook statement read, "but in this case, the MoveOn.org-led group misrepresents how Facebook Beacon works. Beacon gives users an easy way to share relevant information from other sites with their friends on Facebook."

Facebook's statement stressed that because this information is not public, it isn't an invasion of privacy. "Information is shared with a small selection of a user's trusted network of friends, not publicly on the Web or with all Facebook users," the statement explained. "Users also are given multiple ways to choose not to share information from a participating site, both on that site and on Facebook." 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.

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