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Facebook adjusts ad platform after privacy protest
Facebook adjusts ad platform after privacy protest
Saturday December 01, 2007
Facebook has changed its three-week-old advertising platform to soothe members outraged by what they saw as an assault on their privacy at the popular social networking website.
Facebook said Friday that members will only be fodder for the ad platform, referred to as Beacon, if they "opt-in" as opposed to the original format that automatically included them unless they took the effort to "opt-out."
Beacon lets "partners" track Facebook members' visits to their websites and relay messages letting users' friends in the social networking community know what they bought in a tactic referred to as "trusted referral" advertising.
"I saw my (girlfriend) bought an item I had been saying I wanted ... so now part of my Christmas gift has been ruined," Matthew Helfgott wrote in a posting in an online forum lambasting Facebook's advertising system.
"Facebook is ruining Christmas!"
Internet civic and political action group Moveon.org said that 55,000 of Facebook's 50 million members have electronically signed a petition titled "Facebook: Stop invading my privacy."
The petition calls for Facebook not to spread word of what members buy to their friends without explicit permission.
AFP
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