Facebook Tweaks Beacon Ad Plan, Saves Christmas

Facebook might not be ruining Christmas after all.

Amid pressure from MoveOn.org, Facebook on Thursday altered its Beacon advertising program to allow users more control over how their Internet activities are incorporated into their Facebook profiles. Facebook members who shop on Beacon sites such as eBay and Fandango must now give Facebook explicit permission before it can include purchase information in users' news-feeds or mini-feeds.

MoveOn set up a Facebook petition last week, calling on the social networking site to make Beacon an opt-in rather than an opt-out program. It charged that Facebook was "ruining Christmas" because unknown to at least some users, items they had purchased on participating Beacon sites were showing up in their Facebook newsfeeds, where they could be viewed by the intended recipient of that gift.

Initially, Facebook users who shopped on Beacon sites were shown a small "Facebook is sending this purchase to your news-feed" notice on the purchase confirmation page. If you missed that notice or failed to click the "No Thanks" button, all your Facebook "friends" would soon know what you bought from any of Beacon's 44 participants.

MoveOn charged that this practice was invasive and that Facebook did not adequately communicate with members how their purchase activities would be shared with friends. At first Facebook said MoveOn misrepresented how Beacon worked, because it shared information only with someone's friends, not the entire Web.

That's great, I guess, but how many of your Facebook "friends" do you actually want to keep apprised of all your Internet activities? Not very many, apparently, since MoveOn's petition garnered at least 52,000 members in the last week, the group said.





By Thursday night, Facebook had reversed course and released a statement that said it would publish Internet purchase information only if a user gave Facebook permission to do so.

"Users must click on 'OK' in a new initial notification on their Facebook home pages before the first Beacon story is published to their friends from each participating site," Facebook said. "We recognize that users need to clearly understand Beacon before they first have a story published, and we will continue to refine this approach to give users choice."

Ignoring that notice will not send it to your news-feed, as it did in the past. It will simply sit there until you decide to address it. You can also go to your account's privacy settings and permanently block Facebook from publishing information about activity on a particular site. After all, no one needs to know that you're buying Marie Osmond's freaky dolls on eBay or the complete "90210" DVD set from Blockbuster.

UPDATE: The interest groups are weighing in on the Facebook announcement.

Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, had this to say:

Facebook still doesn't really want to face-up to its many privacy problems. While it modified one aspect of the Beacon system as a result of organized pressure and regulatory concerns, serious safeguards will be necessary to address the range of practices in Facebook's new targeted marketing system (from social ads to insights to the role of third party developers). Facebook's members should have the power to decide how their data is to be collected, analyzed and used for commercial purposes. This will require Facebook to more seriously address how its new marketing system undermines user privacy. For example, the Beacon fix still permits Facebook to collect, store, analyze, and potentially use a member's purchasing data. The Federal Trade Commission and other regulatory authorities here and abroad will need to address how the structure of Facebook threatens user privacy. Facebook's senior managers should also embrace a far-reaching approach to privacy that will make this social network a digital environment that nurtures the individual rights of users. CDD, along with its allies in the privacy community, intends to pursue this case."

Kathryn Montgomery, a professor of communication at American University, agreed:

Facebook should be commended for today's decision to change some of its online marketing practices in response to user backlash and consumer group pressure. But the slight alterations the company has made in its Beacon program will not address the much larger, and more troubling privacy problems raised by the site's new digital marketing apparatus. Facebook and other popular social networks have ushered in a new era of behavioral profiling, data mining and 'nanotargeting' that will quickly become state of the art unless additional consumer and regulatory interventions are made. These practices raise particularly troubling issues for teens, who are increasingly living their lives on these sites and are largely unaware of how their every move is being tracked. The Federal Trade Commission and the Congress need to take a very close look at Facebook and other online platforms, and develop rules for ensuring meaningful privacy protections.

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