Facebook Can’t Be Trusted
Facebook introduced Beacon as a part of its Social Ads program to try and monetize from the surge in the site’s popularity. Beacon essentially tracks your purchases from participating sites such as Blockbuster, Overstock, and Fandango, and broadcasts that information to your Facebook friends. Oh and by the way, the program uses your data to make money for Facebook while you receive nothing in return. When introduced, Beacon was automatically turned on and supposedly gave users an on-screen message to opt-out of transmitting their purchases to friends, a message that many users say they never saw. Even before Beacon launched, there was some backlash and privacy concerns, and many rose up against the program after the launch. Just as I figured, Facebook did an about face and made Beacon opt-in to its users, hoping to quell another News Feeds-like backlash. From an outsider looking in, this debacle is another example of why you shouldn’t trust Facebook with your privacy.
Unlike News Feeds, Beacon didn’t use information that was already in a user’s Facebook profile. It collected and used data from other sites and transmitted that information to other Facebook users. One would think that Mark Zuckerberg and crew would have learned a lesson from privacy issues with the News Feeds debacle, but obviously, they didn’t. Instead, they took privacy violations to a whole new level with Beacon. The News Feeds and Beacon mishaps are shining examples of how Facebook no longer values privacy of its users and thus, can’t be trusted. That being said, if you still have a Facebook account, my question to you is, why? They’ve obviously shown that they value money over your privacy and don’t think out features as well as they should; News Feeds and Beacon shows that. It makes you wonder what’s next in Facebook’s Social Ads program and in what way will any future programs step all over your privacy; I have a feeling that they will. I understand that the company has to justify their 15 billion dollar valuation by ramping up revenues, but sacrificing user privacy and allegedly lie to advertisers to earn profits is not the way to do it.
Facebook might be the hot playground that all the cool kids want to play in, but I wonder how long that will last with these highly visible privacy breaches. My personal opinion is that people should be running away from Facebook in droves. Any company that claims to value your privacy yet consistently violates it is a company you should not support. Period. With Facebook being such a young, small company and pulling these kinds of things now, can you imagine what they might be capable of if they were Microsoft-sized? Think about it, and think about why you should stay away from Facebook.
