Published:
November 29 2007, 02:59 PM
by
Benjamin Googins
“Creepy”, “stupid”, and “a violation of privacy” are a few ways people have described Facebook’s new advertising system. Facebook Ads introduce both a privacy concern and an annoyance factor, and give the user only marginal control over the annoyance concern and zero control over the privacy concern.
One newly introduced feature feeds information about your external web usage back to your profile under the ‘News Feed’ section. When Facebook Ads was first announced on November 6th, there were about 44 external websites (partners) using Facebook Beacon. If you visit one of these external sites and perform a ‘triggering action’ while there, information related to this action will be transmitted back to Facebook. For example, if you rent a ‘Lord of the Rings’ DVD from Blockbuster.com, Facebook Ads may send this information back to your profile and post it in your Mini Feed and News Feed. Likewise, if you played a game on kongregate.com, a message about your game play would be sent to your profile for everyone to see.
Facebook does offer an opt-out for individual transactions via ‘toast pop-ups,’ but this does not ensure your actions on a partner site will not make it back to your profile. If you close the page too quickly, “before the toast has popped,” or if you miss the toast completely, after 20 seconds Facebook assumes that an unclicked toast means you don’t care and feeds the information to your profile. Worse yet, the main privacy concern is that regardless of whether you opt-out of the individual toast offer, data regarding your presence on the partner site is still sent back to Facebook. In fact, this data is sent before you even have a chance to opt-out.
For me, the Ad system is a real privacy concern. It connects my online actions to my Facebook account – collecting and aggregating an even broader array of data in one database. Yikes. Once I found out about this ad system and realized I didn’t like it, I looked at my options.
Here are some of them:
- Cancel my Facebook account.
- Continually opt-out of News Feed from external sites.
- Do nothing.
- Block facebook.com/beacon*, hence block data transmission.
- Petition Beacon partner sites.
Option 1. This isn’t a good option for me at this time. I use Facebook to connect with people and have invested time and other resources building my Facebook presence. Quitting is not as easy as simply going into my account settings and selecting ‘deactivate.’ In the field of economics the term “elasticity of demand” is used to describe consumer receptivity to changes in price (e.g.: if the price goes up will they still buy?). I think I will create a new term “retractability of investment”. In other words, I invested emotion, time, and other resources in Facebook - what would it take for me to retract my investment by deactivating my account? As of now, my investment is too high and I don’t consider retraction a viable option, but if the privacy violations continue, my internal scale may tip.
Option 2. This is not really a solution at all. Regarding the annoyance, there is only the opt-out option on a site-by-site basis. Besides, I usually have a million windows open and will probably miss the toast popup. Regarding the privacy concern, I can opt-out all day long with no effect on whether data will be sent. As of now, there is no way to control this through an opt-out solution.
Option 3. Nope, up until now Facebook has given me the power to choose what gets displayed on my profile. I like that. Having information about my external actions posted on my profile with no central option to disarm it is too much and I need to be able to stop it. Doing nothing is not an option. I reserve the right to limit the flow of information between my external web affairs and Facebook.
Option 4 is the only option I can think of that allows me to use Facebook, but control my privacy. As long as facebook.com/beacon is the folder used for external sites to send requests, this option will work. You will need a tool for blocking access to this folder. I tried out Firefox’s BlockSite Plugin and it works great (if you use Firefox). Just download the plugin and add http://www.facebook.com/beacon/* and facebook.com/beacon/* under ‘options’ to the ‘add’ section and restart your browser. Note: Adding facebook.com/beacon to Internet Explorer’s restricted sites, is not an option, this will block the entire domain (facebook.com). Also, the hosts file is not an option for the same reason.
Option 5. If you want to try a round-about route, you can petition. On Facebook itself there is a group called: ‘Petition: Facebook, stop invading my privacy’ and a petition to sign (don’t you love democracy). Also, Facebook encourages it’s users to give feedback. Another, possibly swifter round-about, approach would be to contact Beacon partners. There are only 44 partners, but over 20 million Facebook users. Which party do you think has greater voice with Facebook? (hint: probably not you). If you contact partners directly and voice your concern with Facebook Ads, you will probably have a greater return on your investment. Note: while writing this post, I received an RSS feed from OnlineMediaDaily telling of backlash against Facebook Ads. Electronic Privacy Information Center and The Center for Democracy and Technology both plan to take action by filing complaints with the FTC.
For me, I will take both the long term and short term approach – in other words, options 4 and 5. I want data transmission blocked immediately, but also want to send a clear message to Facebook that I am concerned about this new direction they are taking. Simply blocking posts via option 4 is only a band aid. We are now into a new stage of the ‘digital revolution’ and norms regarding personal privacy are still forming and everyone has a say where things will end up.
Unfortunately, for now, Facebook seems poised to continue with the Ad Network in its current form and is not providing usable controls for opting out of the data transmission and Newsfeeds. They could easily provide a central control mechanism, passing control to the user. If you are a Facebook user, click ‘Home’ > ‘Privacy’ > ‘News Feed and Mini Feed’ and you will see the following:
Where I have highlighted in RED is where Facebook should put the control option. Better yet, Facebook should make this new Ad network an opt-in option where the user must choose to join before data is transmitted – the box would be unchecked. See a follow up article here.