Facebook users triumph again
p2pnet news view | Advertising:- There’s an ongoing battle between Mark Zuckerberg and his minions and the people who will insist – Damn them! – on using the site to communicate with each other instead of going like good little consumers to sites owned by Facebook advertisers.
Zuckerberg, et al, know who you are, how old you are, where you went to school, whether you’re male or female, they’ve read the messages you sent to your friends, and so on.
So they reckoned they could do anything they wanted with those data, accordingly adjusting the Facebook terms of service to reflect their erroneous, as it turned out, belief.
Once upon a time, Mark ‘Enhancing User Experiences’ Zuckerberg tried to follow users around the web, noting where they went, what they did when they got there, etc, so he could sell the information to advertisers, who could then use it for ‘behavioural targeting’.
There was a huge outcry and after many fulsome utterances that he was only trying to make things nice for Facebook members, Zuckerberg was forced to yank Beacon, as he’d named his spy application.
When his most recent move to bamboozle the people who keep the site going looked like coming unstuck, “The trust you place in us as a safe place to share information is the most important part of what makes Facebook work,” he said.
“Our goal is to build great products and to communicate clearly to help people share more information in this trusted environment.”
heh
But Facebook folks weren’t buying and now, “Going forward,” he’s decided to go backward and, “take a new approach towards developing our terms”.
Returning to the previous terms, “was the right thing for now, says Zuckerberg unctuously.
But he’s not giving up.
“As I said yesterday, we think that a lot of the language in our terms is overly formal and protective so we don’t plan to leave it there for long.”
Overly protective? Does that mean the Facebook team can’t trample all over user privacy and other rights whenever they feel like it?
The next version, he adds, “will be a substantial revision from where we are now”.
Not only but also, “If you’d like to get involved in crafting our new terms, you can start posting your questions, comments and requests in the group we’ve created – Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities.”
You know what to do.
Beacon – Blockbuster sued over Facebook Beacon, April 17, 2008
bamboozle the people – Facebook `Terms of Service` storm, February , 2009
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February 18th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
I know what to do…
Indeed I do. I don’t go to Facebook. It’s owner has already shown what is important to him. Reaping money off the site anyway that can be set up to do so. I don’t need those sorts of people in my life.
This is why when some site like Kaspersky’s website gets hacked that people lose their personal data. If you don’t give it to them, they don’t have it to be hacked and obtained from someone else. I know for sure that my data wasn’t in that because I didn’t give it up.
Same with what Facebook has been trying to do on and off. How to monetize the site by using it’s members as the cash cow. When you get to looking around, this same sort of mentality is persuasive all over the net. It’s also the sites I tend to avoid.
If a site won’t let you join and participate without giving up real life data it tells you they plan on doing something with the data. It’s my data, not theirs. They did not negotiate with me on it’s use. They took it for granted it would not be that important to me. I got news for ya, it is. I don’t like my data out there out of my hands for some hacker to obtain because the site was not vigilante in watching over it. Most of them when they have a breach aren’t going to tell you. You’re just stuck with a rude awakening one day.
So I don’t just give my data away. Not to Facebook, not to other sites. They can like that or not, really doesn’t matter to me. It’s my data and I control it, not the other way around.
February 18th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
this is EXACTLY why one of my security points of interest is to NEVER use crap like Facebook. Well written post RW.
February 18th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
I don’t really care if they do all the data mining they want. If they can get 10,000,000 teenagers or whoever to post on their site, and they want to use that data to do whatever, fine. But for me, I don’t want to be the 10,000,001′th person that they mine. I mean, it should be assumed, in a world like today, that when you share information with a business – any business – the chances are they don’t understand individual rights, so you can’t get all righteous on them and demand your privacy or whatever it is you citizens think you have a right to these days. This is just one more example among many.
The thing is, when you post, that data is available now. Anyone with access to Google can probably find out about whatever it is you posted. Even if Facebook wasn’t the ones doing the dirty work, someone could use the publicly available information to do it for them.
Of course, they can only do that if they know what your genders are! Which leads back to the basic rule of thumb: if you don’t want to be a statistic, don’t contribute to the stats pool.
February 19th, 2009 at 3:15 am
@Jakykong:
There’s a difference between what you choose to post and being involuntarily monitored and profiled.
It is this profiling that leads to databases that are kept, cross-referenced, and eventually collect pretty well EVERYTHING about you that you DIDN’T post. The negative possibilities associated with that are endless.
It is through conditioning from the all those who have been trying to capitalize on the Internet over the years that has you thinking “it’s no big deal”, and “you can’t do anything about it anyway”.
The fact is you have every right to not share any personal info you choose, and a network such as Facebook does not have the right to share it for you or even study it, without your implicit consent.
February 19th, 2009 at 9:46 am
THE HISTORY OF BAIT AND SWITCH IN AMERICA
I am glad this issue of Facebook has come up just in time. I was just finishing my new book, THE HISTORY OF BAIT AND SWITCH IN AMERICA. The book is almost ready for publishing, after adding a last minute chapter on Madoff Investment (chapters 12,788).
It was time that the history of the most traditional of American traditions in government, business and politics be written. After all most Americans have not realized yet how this ingrained tradition affects (or is it screws?) their lives every day. These everyday folks (or is it victims?) and all mystery and crime book fans will love the book, I guarantee. Here are some sections and their chapters:
GOVERNMENT
- The American Constitution (fiction in paradise and full of loopholes)
- RIAA Lawsuits (management and lawyers taking the labels for a ride)
- Government Budget Management (fiction in paradise)
- Government Projects Cost Estimates (always low to do the selling job)
- Judges and the Courts (Justice is blind, it sees nothing)
- Copyright Law (the purpose is one thing, the results are another)
- Laws in general (the loopholes are for the friends)
- Military Recruitment (offers adventure, delivers death and destruction)
POLITICS
- Politicians’ Promises (then came laws not read)
- Inheritances in Politics (vote for dad, then comes the family)
- George W. Bush (was he the real terrorist?)
- John McCain (offered experience, the chose Palin)
CONTRACTS
- Book Publisher Contracts (promises publication, publishes almost nothing)
- Record Company Musician Contracts (offers fame, takes your records and the money)
- Music Publisher – Songwriter Contracts (offers fame, takes your song and the money)
- The Purpose of Small Letter in Contracts (just to fool you)
- Facebook Terms and Conditions (you own nothing)
MONEY – INVESTMENTS
- Wall Street (for greedy suckers)
- Madoff (for greedy suckers)
COMMERCE
- Guarantees In General (we love the lifetime ones)
- Advertisements (never the complete truth)
- Newspaper headlines (headline unrelated to the story)
THE HISTORY OF BAIT AND SWITCH IN AMERICA will be in stores on April 1, 2009. Look for it under “Humor”.