Facebook’s Private Privacy
I’m sure many have now heard about the heat Facebook is taking for their "information sharing" across websites. Apperently, purchases from certain merchants get fed into your Facebook feed unless you opt-out. That’s right, users are automatically opted in for this privacy invasion. Nice. Very friendly. Funny how this comes on the heels of that ridiculous Microsoft buy-in, isn’t it?
I heard on NPR that Facebook, responding to criticism of privacy invasion, said that users can set their privacy options to not display information aggrigated from other websites in case they didn’t want everyone to know what book or blender they just purchased. Deciding to tackle this before everyone I know discovers how many copies of The Rights of Man I’ll be purchasing, I open up Facebook and go to their privacy section. Here is the full content of that page (minus headers and ads):
Privacy Settings for External Websites
Back to Privacy Overview without saving changes.
Show your friends what you like and what you’re up to outside of Facebook. When you take actions on the sites listed below, you can choose to have those actions sent to your profile.Please note that these settings only affect notifications on Facebook. You will still be notified on affiliate websites when they send stories to Facebook. You will be able to decline individual stories at that time.No sites have tried sending stories to your profile
That’s it. Here are the two things that jump out at me. 1) There are no sites listed below so I don’t even know what sites to be wary of (read, unmarked minefield). 2) There’s no settings to control. There’s no way I can tell Facebook that I don’t want this information gathered, traded, used for marketing, or displayed on my own or EVERYONE’s mini-feed.
Boiler-plated this seems a passive way of saying that they aren’t sharing WHERE this information will be collected from, WHAT they’re wispering about in dark corners, WHEN they will be publishing the information they gather, or WHO I can tell I want my privacy respected. My question is WHY does Facebook think it’s necessary to do this in such a shady way? There are enough programs and apps for Facebook that people can add if they want this information shown.
They can opt-in.
Why can’t I opt out?