Facebook has just announced that they will be updating their Beacon system. Stories will no longer be published “without a user proactively consenting.” According to Facebook here is how the Beacon changes work:
Stories about actions users take on external websites will continue to be presented to users at the top of their News Feed the next time they return to Facebook. These stories will now always be expanded on their home page so they can see and read them clearly.
Users must click on “OK†in a new initial notification on their Facebook home page before the first Beacon story is published to their friends from each participating site. We recognize that users need to clearly understand Beacon before they first have a story published, and we will continue to refine this approach to give users choice.
If a user does nothing with the initial notification on Facebook, it will hide after some duration without a story being published. When a user takes a future action on a Beacon site, it will reappear and display all the potential stories along with the opportunity to click “OK†to publish or click “remove†to not publish.
Users will have clear options in ongoing notifications to either delete or publish. No stories will be published if users navigate away from their home page. If they delay in making this decision, the notification will hide and they can make a decision at a later time.
Clicking the “Help†link next to the story will take users to a full tutorial that explains exactly how Beacon works, with screenshots showing each step in the process.
Facebook has also stated that they are making the notifications more visible. The fact that stories are no longer published by default is a great first step. For me this is almost the same as a global opt-out since your friends won’t automatically be notified. That means Facebook won’t be ruining Christmas (or Chanukah or any other holidays) for anybody. The main issue is that still remains is that they store your shopping data even if they don’t notify your friends.
This information is extremely valuable for helping them advertise to you. What really strikes me as odd is that other e-commerce providers would agree to this system since this information is extremely valuable to them. Ultimately, there is a lot of overall value gained for advertisers by this new system but it definitely has tested the limits of user privacy. Do you think these new changes are sufficient?
Update
To view more about Facebook Beacon, check out the Facebook Beacon FAQ over on the Facebook site.
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This still is not good enough. Any opt-in functionality should be on the external websites. MoveOn.org should now go after Facebook's partners and make sure that they stop distributing their customers' personal information to third parties like Facebook without the explicit consent of customers.
Comment by scott — November 29, 2007 @ 4:44 pm
My response to this, on the Facebook thread ( http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=593026268….. ):Facebook seems to be changing Beacon to opt-in, but in a screwy way:http://www.allfacebook.com/2007/11/breaking-fac….."Users must click on “OK†in a new initial notification on their Facebook home page before the first Beacon story is published to their friends from each participating site. We recognize that users need to clearly understand Beacon before they first have a story published, and we will continue to refine this approach to give users choice.If a user does nothing with the initial notification on Facebook, it will hide after some duration without a story being published. When a user takes a future action on a Beacon site, it will reappear and display all the potential stories along with the opportunity to click “OK†to publish or click “remove†to not publish."If they actually do it that way, it's good as far as privacy goes, but I think it still shows they don't get it.They will definitely satisfy the requirement that nothing gets shared until a user has taken a specific action to choose to share it, and that's great. However, I suspect that when people first encounter this, their initial reaction will likely be paranoia. Huh, wha?? Where did that come from? How did Facebook get this information? etc. As a result, a lot more people will think it's creepy and say no.Facebook should be building a system based on enticing people to choose to participate, and see it as a positive feature to adopt, rather than a negative feature to stomp on. This change would be a partial step in that direction, but I wonder why they wouldn't go all the way. All I can think of is that they really don't get it, and don't understand why people have reacted the way they have.
Comment by Cos — November 29, 2007 @ 5:15 pm
This still is not good enough. Any opt-in functionality should be on the external websites. MoveOn.org should now go after Facebook's partners and make sure that they stop distributing their customers' personal information to third parties like Facebook without the explicit consent of customers.
Comment by scott — November 29, 2007 @ 5:44 pm
The changes are sufficient.
Comment by Jim — November 29, 2007 @ 5:46 pm
My response to this, on the Facebook thread ( http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=5930262681&... ):
Facebook seems to be changing Beacon to opt-in, but in a screwy way:
http://www.allfacebook.com/2007/11/breaking-faceb...
"Users must click on “OK†in a new initial notification on their Facebook home page before the first Beacon story is published to their friends from each participating site. We recognize that users need to clearly understand Beacon before they first have a story published, and we will continue to refine this approach to give users choice.
If a user does nothing with the initial notification on Facebook, it will hide after some duration without a story being published. When a user takes a future action on a Beacon site, it will reappear and display all the potential stories along with the opportunity to click “OK†to publish or click “remove†to not publish."
If they actually do it that way, it's good as far as privacy goes, but I think it still shows they don't get it.
They will definitely satisfy the requirement that nothing gets shared until a user has taken a specific action to choose to share it, and that's great. However, I suspect that when people first encounter this, their initial reaction will likely be paranoia. Huh, wha?? Where did that come from? How did Facebook get this information? etc. As a result, a lot more people will think it's creepy and say no.
Facebook should be building a system based on enticing people to choose to participate, and see it as a positive feature to adopt, rather than a negative feature to stomp on. This change would be a partial step in that direction, but I wonder why they wouldn't go all the way. All I can think of is that they really don't get it, and don't understand why people have reacted the way they have.
Comment by Cos — November 29, 2007 @ 6:15 pm
Websites are still sending your personal information to Facebook. Although Facebook may not be sharing it with your friends, their privacy policy allows them to use it themselves or share it with other companies. Either all websites using Beacon need to make it opt-in, or Facebook needs to create a page where you can control the sites from which it accepts Beacon information about you. Facebook should then discard any information from sites not in that list.
Comment by Brian — November 29, 2007 @ 7:08 pm
Guys, be sure to be logged off Facebook before you visit a website. Problem solved.
Comment by Stephane Rodriguez — November 29, 2007 @ 9:27 pm
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[...] (via AllFacebook) [...]
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Pingback by Facebook may announce Beacon changes as soon as…today? — November 29, 2007 @ 9:23 pm
The changes are sufficient.
Comment by Jim — November 29, 2007 @ 9:46 pm
[...] O’Neill at All Facebook has the news that Facebook has backtracked on its Beacon feature (as I expected they might), and will now present the data for a Facebook user [...]
Pingback by Facebook bows to the Beacon haters - - mathewingram.com/work — November 29, 2007 @ 10:03 pm
Websites are still sending your personal information to Facebook. Although Facebook may not be sharing it with your friends, their privacy policy allows them to use it themselves or share it with other companies. Either all websites using Beacon need to make it opt-in, or Facebook needs to create a page where you can control the sites from which it accepts Beacon information about you. Facebook should then discard any information from sites not in that list.
Comment by Brian — November 29, 2007 @ 11:08 pm
[...] that folks don’t like their activities being broadcast across the Facebook network.  Mr. O’Neill has the details, but it sounds like that rather than automatically publishing stuff I bought, say that Dancing With [...]
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[...] your every logged-in movement (well, movements in companies affiliated with Beacon). However, today, after more user uproar, Facebook amended its policy on the use of Beacon such that before Facebook [...]
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[...] your every logged-in movement (well, movements in companies affiliated with Beacon). However, today, after more user uproar, Facebook amended its policy on the use of Beacon such that before Facebook [...]
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[...] gift surprises in the process. In response to numerous complaints the social network giant has now modified the way the Beacon news stream functions. Beacon “news items” will now sit waiting on Facebook [...]
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Guys, be sure to be logged off Facebook before you visit a website. Problem solved.
Comment by Stephane Rodriguez — November 30, 2007 @ 1:27 am
[...] que la pratique essentielle pour les annonceurs ne change pas. Ce que Nick O’Neil qui anime AllFacebook explicite fort bien : “Cela veut dire que Facebook ne foutra pas le Noël de qui que ce soit en l’air (ni [...]
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[...] them vulnerable to consumers that don’t want ads. Under the pressure build up they are now retracting their original beacon ad model and providing the user (an inefficient) opt-out possibilit…. Facebook will be stretching the limits on this one, but I bet, if users have to opt out every time [...]
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[...] (via AllFacebook) [...]
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Facebook Beacon: Spyware 2.0?…When Facebook Beacon was first announced and the first screenshots shown, I pointed out in a comment on TechCrunch (#43) the issues around the collection of data in addition to notification. Four days later, GigaOm called out Beacon's privacy issues…
Comment by MetaMuse — December 3, 2007 @ 9:39 am
Facebook Beacon: Spyware 2.0?…
When Facebook Beacon was first announced and the first screenshots shown, I pointed out in a comment on TechCrunch (#43) the issues around the collection of data in addition to notification. Four days later, GigaOm called out Beacon’s privacy issues…
Trackback by MetaMuse — December 3, 2007 @ 2:39 pm
[...] relented on some issues, agreeing to make the news feeds opt-in.? However, the remaining problem is that [...]
Pingback by Earners Forum Blogs » Blog Archive » Beacon Causing Trouble for Facebook — December 3, 2007 @ 6:14 pm