Earlier this week, the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, issued an apology to Facebook users for not initially giving them an option to opt out of Beacon, an advertising program that tracks users online purchases and reports those purchases to their Facebook designated friends. The theory here is that - if your friend buys an item, you'll want to buy it also. This prompted enough of an outcry [Hey! Now my wife knows I bought that diamond jewelry! Of course, it was for her.]
This is a perfect example of the looming loss of individual privacy as we become part of the expanding internet social network. [In order to get this far on SPL2.0, I have had to get a Google account and a Yahoo account. I am more out there than I have ever been before.] In order to be social, to make friends, we have to give of ourselves, share history, share feelings, thoughts. I've gotten carried away in conversations in the past and later wished I hadn't shared that embarassing incident. If I tell my online blog, it won't be just one person who knows about it.
And why do people want to know my private information? To be my friend? I think not. They want to make money off me. Mark Zuckerberg says Beacon is a warm fuzzy way for friends to get trusted product recommendations from their friends. But Beacon is really a income generating (and BIG income) advertising tool. Other people just want my credit card numbers so they can buy those recommended products.
And we are moving to never being asked if we want to participate, only [hopefully] to be given a chance to opt out after we are enrolled. What next? When voting, will we have to uncheck the boxes of the preferred candidates if we don't want to vote for them.
No comments:
Post a Comment