Facebook (must I hyperlink the word?) has moderated its latest intrusion of users' privacy, Facebook Beacon, a program that sent notices to all of a Facebook user's friends when they bought something on one of 44 participating websites. These notices show up on newsfeeds accompanied by a complementary banner ad on the left.
Facebook Beacon prompted an online petition against its practices that led to today's announcement. The Becaon feature will remain, but case-by-case opt-outs will now be available and more noticeable so that not everyone will know that you bought a Fight Club movie poster on allposters.com.
Facebook is trying to walk a fine line between respecting people's privacy and making a profit so that it can stay in business. While I believe that Facebook (the application) is not "private" in any sense of the word and that users lack a private subjectivity that they possess in real life, I also believe that my personal information shouldn't be used by any kind of tracking software for such blatant marketing purposes. Ideally, what I buy is no one's business but my own.
My post was inspired by a rather dense digital media marketer quoted in the New York Times story:
“Isn’t this community getting a little hypocritical?” said Chad Stoller, director of emerging platforms at Organic, a digital advertising agency. “Now, all of a sudden, they don’t want to share something?”
The quotation, along with the existence of Beacon itself, indicates how far marketers have to go before truly understanding the mindset of the Facebook user. Yes, Mr. Stoller, all of a sudden, we
don't want to share something. Perhaps you have noticed that everything we share on Facebook we volunteer. Perhaps you've noticed that users can determine which kinds of actions are published to their public newsfeed. Perhaps you've noticed that people in general don't take lightly to having their own information used without their knowledge or information. The issue,
sir, is not about not wanting to share, but not even knowing that you're sharing and not having the chance to say, "no, thanks, I'd rather not."
I believe that Facebook execs and advertisers have gone about tracking user purchases the wrong way. Facebook is unusual because its very existence depends on the public nature of its information gathering. We know that Facebook tracks us because we see it in our newsfeeds. But everytime the cashier swipes my Safeway, my Indigo card, my Shoppers card, I know that the information is flying through the ether into a database in who-knows-where as well. That doesn't seem to bother me as much because, oddly, I have no idea what the information is being used for. In other words, the information gathering seems—and only seems, mind you—more benign because I don't see the end results.
Facebook can't lull its users into the same sense of false security. But what it could do is capitalize on its users' odd penchant for sharing every bloody part of their lives online— emphasis on the "sharing". If Facebook could figure out how to make users
want to talk about their latest purchases (sale notices? promotions? coupons?) there would be less backlash. I do tell my friends if my favourite store is having a good sale or if I bought something particularly nice for myself recently. I do it because I'm an excitable (self-aware but still excitable) consumer. Capture that excitement, Mr. Zuckerberg, and you might be in business.
