I am not complaining about BIG Business.
I am not complaining about privacy. It does concern privacy, but is more about giving people the option to choose.
In my opinion, most people on Facebook must not be concerned with it, and Zuckerberg must have agreed.
Zuckerberg Caves In, Lets Facebook Users Turn Off Beacon
The jest of the story is that Facebook had changed it's "Terms of Use", and opted in ALL of its' members into an advertising plan whereby if you bought something , Facebook would let your "friends", and the rest of the world know what you bought.
I am not complaining about advertising,
From the article;
"....a controversial new advertising platform that notifies Facebook users’ friends of purchases they may have made on various external sites."
In this case, not only were you opted in, but you could not opt out.
From the article;
".... Facebook has finally granted users the option of turning off Beacon...."
That was nice of them.
From Zuckerbergs' apology;
"The problem with our initial approach of making it an opt-out system instead of opt-in was that if someone forgot to decline to share something, Beacon still went ahead and shared it with their friends..."
"forgot to decline" OOOPppss. I forgot to tell you that I don't want to you telling everyone what I bought.
So you have a policy change were people can now opt out, but the info is still shared anyway. Oppsss. No big deal, mistakes happen.
Isn't sharing wonderful?
And then;
"It took us too long after people started contacting us to change the product so that users had to explicitly approve what they wanted to share. Instead of acting quickly, we took too long to decide on the right solution."
He's more concerned about taking "too long" to grant people the right "to explicitly approve what they wanted to share." than he is about opting them in, without the right to opt out.
Changing the terms of use on your website, and automatically opting people in just isn't polite.
...!
