The Next Step

Well, they’re here. They aren’t as bad as I had feared in my original post. They are targeted advertising, yes, but Facebook isn’t opening your information to anyone new. Instead, they ask advertisers what kind of people they would like to advertise to, and place the ads within Facebook. Annoying, but not invasive and, more importantly, not breaking the trust Facebook has cultivated by protecting its users’ privacy so diligently. No, the social ads as they exist now don’t worry me (though that is not to say that they don’t open up some scary possibilities). What worries me is where Facebook is going with a couple of other new features.

What worries me most is Facebook Beacon. Essentially, Beacon amounts to a JavaScript plugin for a web site, say google.com. The plugin keeps track of certain things you do on such a web page, completely configurable by the site developer. In this case, let’s consider searching the web for, say, “extra small condoms”. The Beacon plugin will pop up a tiny AJAX window (which popup blockers don’t kill yet) telling you this action has been logged to your Facebook profile. Now, there is a tiny link on the bottom right that says “No thanks” that will let you opt out of this, but it is far easier to just click the larger, colored “Hide” button that will in fact publish your actions to your profile.

It is that “no thanks” link that Facebook says gives users the ability to protect their privacy, but what if this Beacon thing catches on? This means that if you are logged into Facebook and doing things on other sites, you need to constantly be on guard, because you never know which action a site might try to log. Worse yet, it looks like even if you do opt out and your friends can’t see what you did, Facebook still knows:

The javascript on the Fandango site pops up a little screen which asks if you want to publish the information on Facebook. If you say no, your friends won’t see the information, but apparently Facebook still receives it. This means that if you are a Facebook member, Facebook will know what you are doing on each of their partner sites. And there is no way for you to opt out of that. Or is there? I asked Facebook to clarify and I am still waiting for them to write back.

What does this mean? It means that there is a very real possibility that even if I choose not to have my extra small condom search logged to my profile, I will still receive targeted advertising based on that information. Essentially, the Beacon feature allows Facebook to spy on you anywhere on the web so that it can better target ads to you later. Creepy, huh? Here are your only options, as far as I can see:

1. Stop using Facebook and lose touch with many of your friends as a result.
2. Disable javascript, thus rendering huge portions of the web unusable or hideous.
3. Only stay logged into Facebook when you are actively using it, and delete its cookie(s) every time you log out.

Easy, right?