

No opting out from Facebook turning your check-ins, likes into ads - abraham
http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2011/01/no-opting-out-from-facebook-turning-your-check-ins-likes-into-ads.ars

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51Cards
Another privacy 'win' by Facebook.

I'm somewhat surprised by this feature, it would be fairly easy to abuse. If
you were suddenly upset with say Starbucks you could change your photo and use
your 'check-in' comments to push negative advertising as well. Not only
negative advertising, but targeted negative advertising.

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bpeters
Businesses will soon be paying for their own negative feedback... uhm fail?

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sudont
I'd wager that there'll be at least some sort of Bayesian "hate" filtering.
That means something like "Fuck McDonalds" won't trigger the ad.

No idea how they'd deal with positive-word, negative-connotation satire,
though.

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jcl
That suggests that there _is_ an easy way to opt out: Just include some
profanity each time you check in.

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mayank
There's no way that they can implement thorough manual curation at the scale
Facebook is at. Even better, as the parent suggested, use positive words to
avoid any automated sentiment analysis: Starbucks makes my colon sing!

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alex_h
"Currently, marketers don't have the ability to know or plan word-of-mouth
endorsements as part of their campaigns,"

I thought that was the point of word-of-mouth endorsements.

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seiji

      Please select your FaceSenseWords campaign options:
        [ ] Grass Roots Astroturfing
        [ ] Viral
        [ ] Passionate plea by a bored 14 year old on youtube
        [ ] Flashmob protest
        [ ] DDoS of competitor
    

Facebook or 4chan?

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pflats
I doubt this will really provoke much outrage. Remember, half of Facebook is a
vanity service. If you're "liking" Starbucks or checking-in at TGI Fridays,
you want to show off to your friends that you like that brand.

~~~
gammarator
Yeah, one of the major differences relative to Beacon is that Beacon brought
your activity on other sites into Facebook ("gammarator bought 'Bourne
Ultimatum' tickets on Fandango.com!") Here it's taking check-ins and likes
that the user has personally posted within the Facebook ecosystem.

That said, I expect all-caps viral status messages about this in about two
weeks.

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keeganpoppen
So I have a question: why is this a problem? Or, more specifically, how is
this non-trivially different from the way that Facebook has worked to date? It
seems almost identical to the way that your activity would otherwise have been
broadcast, save the fact that it is in a more prominent, advertising-y
context. It's not like the check-in didn't happen, or that it wouldn't have
shown up anyway in the exact same activity feeds that are instead receiving
the ad form of the check-in.

For some reason it seems like users have this pathology where they are upset
whenever and however web companies try to monetize site usage, regardless of
justification or intrusiveness. But, then again, I don't understand how people
justify using AdBlock either, and lots of people (at least on Reddit) got
really pissed about that when Ars Technica tried to block AdBlock users.

Also, how is this like Beacon at all? People are already checking in at these
places on Facebook. The check-ins are just getting sponsored by the subjects
of those check-ins. It's not like there's any surreptitious data sharing,
apart from letting Starbucks know that I checked in there (which they would
also know from the fact that I bought a Latte).

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hackinthebochs
Exactly. People, especially here, try hard to justify their hatred for
facebook. If this were foursquare finding a way to monetize their check-ins it
would be praised.

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dustingetz
its starting to feel like Facebook is pushing the limits of click-wrap EULAs
so far that the general public will demand EULA reform.

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dhimes
I already want EULA reform. Ever print out the one for MS Office? Sheesh. The
last one I had (2003) was, as I recall, 27 pages of 9 point font.

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khafra
Ah, but subscription-based services are where you can find the true EULA joy--
for instance, not only is the iPhone app store EULA 20 pages of text which you
have to read on a phone screen, it also pops up once every few months with
mysterious changes, the content of which I've never found, that you must
accept.

~~~
dhimes
That is so funny- I remember the last iTunes update they did this, too. I
think they tried to spell out the change but I didn't understand it.

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rfugger
This is the kind of shit that will do Facebook in eventually. People don't
like being exploited for someone else's profit so overtly.

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rst
There are echoes here of the "Beacon" fiasco --- in which Facebook was briefly
broadcasting users' activity on third-party sites (particularly on-line
purchases) to their Facebook friends, whether the users wanted that broadcast
or not. This isn't quite the same thing, but you can certainly imagine it
going wrong in some of the same ways...

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rhn
Prohibiting users from opting out will likely result in less 'likes' for
corporate products. I find it puzzling that Facebook seems completely
disinterested in incentivizing users to partcipate in their sponsor coaxing
schemes. Moves like this would likely be better received if users were treated
as affiliates (i.e. compensated for their product endorsements) rather than
walking data aggregates.

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jgilliam
This needs one more feature. If Starbucks uses your likeness, you should get a
free drink.

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zoomzoom
Revenue sharing is definitely one possible reaction to the privacy backlash.

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mayank
But an unlikely one. Like all privacy "outrage" when it comes to Facebook,
this might follow a predictable cycle -- firestorm in the news, some minor
concession by Facebook, and eventually no one even remembers the issue down
the line.

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brennen
It's nice how Facebook keeps validating the decision to opt out of Facebook.

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rblion
Beacon lives on. Facebook is too smart for the average bear.

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bitskits
...or it's users are not savvy/don't care enough to stop them.

