Editorial: Keep your business out of my Face(book)

On Nov. 29, Facebook finally announced improved privacy policies, but only after considerable protest including a petition, the intervention of Moveon.org, and a Facebook group of over 62,000 members.

The controversy erupted after Facebook implemented a new feature called “Facebook Beacon,” which tracked users’ actions on third-party sites and published the actions on Facebook.

The logic was that your friends would be able to see what products you are looking at and buying on sites like Amazon.com ““ a tool that would be invaluable for advertisers trying to market to a younger demographic.

Needless to say, thousands of users were immediately alarmed to hear that Facebook could be collecting and disseminating information about what products they buy online or what Web sites they visit.

Who would receive this information in addition to our friends?

Beacon epitomizes the meteoric rise of Facebook over the past four years from startup social networking site to corporate Big Brother.

Facebook needs to back off from farming and exploiting personal data for the sole purpose of increasing profit margins. Its tactless and transparent ploy to use the popular site as an advertising and marketing tool hasn’t and shouldn’t sit well with its loyal base of users.

Users should not have to sign petitions and form groups to reverse policies that quietly crop up, broadcasting their personal information unbeknownst to them.

If thousands of users oppose such features, Facebook should know better than to implement them and expect users to accept the misuse of private data.

Thankfully, the policy change is a step in the right direction because it allows users to decide whether the information should be released or not by prompting them with the choice every time Beacon tracks actions on external sites.

Unfortunately, Beacon is only the latest in a series of rapidly developing changes to Facebook which have aroused fears of privacy abuse.

After Facebook implemented a feature called “News Feeds” that displayed nearly every action taken by a user, over 700,000 users joined the group “Students Against Facebook News Feeds,” prompting founder Mark Zuckerberg to apologize, saying “We really messed this one up,” and offer improved privacy options.

When will Facebook get the hint that users do not want their information automatically sent out to the world to see?

Facebook originally started as a social networking site for college students to communicate with their friends and make friends with their college peers.

At the time, Facebook was a clean, simple alternative to MySpace, which was full of bells and whistles.

But fast forward a few years and the innovation that made Facebook attractive to college students has mutated into innovation that better serves corporate interests at the expense of users.

The Facebook beast now includes the same Webcam girls of MySpace and high school kids pretending they’re in college.

But it has finally surpassed MySpace by attempting to announce what Web sites we use, transcending the traditional model of trashy meat-market networking site and establishing the next generation of hip markets of private information catered to commercial interests.

Facebook needs to reverse this trend, and return to its less invasive origins.

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