Facebook CEO Apologizes for Privacy Invading Beacon Ads
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a public apology and stated that Facebook has made provisions to allow its members to turn the ads off.
Today, finally, Zuckerberg did what critics — including MoveOn.org, which took an early stand in the case — had been demanding: he allowed people to turn Beacon off. He also made clear that when members do turn off the system, Facebook will not store information about your surfing habits that it receives from its ad partners.
As originally conceived, Beacon was a particularly egregious scheme for invading your privacy. Dozens of sites had contracted with Facebook to send people’s surfing data to the social network; your profile would send out little messages to your friends about what you were doing on those sites — telling them that you were shopping on Overstock.com, say, or were cooking certain recipes at Epicurious — as a kind of ad for those sites.
Not only did Facebook not allow people to turn off the system, it also assumed that if you did not explicitly prohibit it from sending messages out from each site in its ad network, you were granting permission. In other words, Beacon was devised as an opt-out plan — or, more precisely, it was plead-out, because getting the system to stop sending messages on your behalf involved a torturous number of steps.
Responding to the critics, last week Facebook fixed the system a bit, making the plan opt-in.
Zuckerberg’s rollout of Beacon, an online tool that tracks the purchases and activities of its users on dozens of websites, marked his first major stumble since becoming Silicon Valley’s newest golden boy.
The Facebook flap comes amid growing concern about the increasingly sophisticated technology used to track online activities in an effort to more precisely target advertising.
Consumer and privacy watchdogs say Facebook and other social networking sites have not been forthcoming enough about how much user information they harvest and what they do with it. They pledged to continue to press regulators in the United States and abroad to develop guidelines to protect online privacy, particularly of teens.
“Young people are pouring their hearts out, living their lives and interacting with all of their friends on these sites,” said Kathryn Montgomery, a professor of communication at American University. “The more we live our lives online, the more we need to have a set of rules of how businesses operate there.”
This unfolding episode has also created discomfort for potential companies who had made plans to advertise on Facebook, as the LA Times article goes on to point out:
The opposition to Beacon also prompted concern among some marketers. Anticipating the privacy issues, EBay Inc. decided to let online auctioneers alert their friends about items they are selling through Beacon starting next year, but only if users give explicit permission.
“Brands have become skittish in deploying advertising and marketing initiatives with this level of negative press and user privacy concerns,” said Jeremiah Owyang, a senior analyst with Forrester Research.
Overstock.com Inc., which received a handful of customer complaints, pulled out of the Beacon program last month and won’t turn it back on until more Facebook users are happy with how it works.
“We need to wait and see what the Facebook community reaction is,” said Jonathan Johnson, the online retailer’s senior vice president of corporate affairs.
Facebook’s future depends on the goodwill of its users, said Nick O’Neill, who writes the AllFacebook.com blog.
“Facebook has die-hard fans, and it needs to keep those people,” he said. “They are the ones doing the job of marketing and turning Facebook into one of the most hyped products out there right now.”
As the story unfolds, we are reminded of the vast extent to which social networking and the relinquishment of privacy it entails is an uncharted territory of human interaction.
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