expertSEM

Facebook recently reversed course on their outrageously intrusive Beacon advertising platform.

I will quote from the Beacon sales pitch,

“Enable effortless sharing while protecting user privacy.

User privacy is extremely important to Facebook. We designed Facebook Beacon to enable effortless sharing, but we’ve also put in features to protect user privacy. When you send an action to Facebook, the user is immediately alerted of the story you wish to publish and will be alerted again when they sign into Facebook. The user can choose to opt out of the story in either instance, but the user doesn’t need to take any action for the story to be published on Facebook.”

Facebook was trying to devise a passive word of mouth advertising platform (“word of mouth” advertising is spoken of in reverent hushed whispers in advertising circles due to its high effectiveness and low cost). But Beacon is beyond intrusive; they planned to automatically disclose purchases from participating vendors, like Amazon, or just about any other online business that installed a tracking script. Just what every user wants, a broadcast of their purchase history to all their friends! One could never imagine a purchase scenario under which this might be problematic…

…Alright, enough fun, but it brings up a serious question, “What the hell were they thinking?” Search Engines (well, Google at least) learned this some time ago, users do not want their search history known by anyone else. I’m surprised that Facebook didn’t follow their lead, looks like they need to update their job board, I’ve made the corrections for them:

…Really PPC Handyman, enough fun. I am proud of my consumer rights friends for winning this one for the users. But there is another, more powerful tool users wield which can get their point across, Abandonment. Media networks need to be ever aware that they succeed with the consent of the people; break this trust and suffer the consequences. Examples abound, once Napster fell under the control of the RIAA, users bailed. Once Friendster fell behind the technological curve, users stopped signing up, and went to MySpace and Facebook instead. Ironically, those two social networks now risk their own success in their ferocious quest to monetize their service, at the expense of the user experience.

The captive audience now enjoyed by Facebook could be gone in a flash if they fall into a pattern of egregious error. Take heart, fearful internet users of the world, not only are there hoards of keyboard freedom fighters working on your behalf, but you hold the power to reign in gross privacy infractions – through abandonment.

For firms in the business of handling personal data, there’s a simple question you can answer when dealing with disclosing private data, “would I want my worst enemy knowing this about me?” The answer will clearly determine the ethical course of action. Facebook, take note.