Community rules over Facebook
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In recent weeks, facebook has been implemented an ad system called beacon which upset a number of their users. Well these protests have forced a change… The Guardian give a better description of the situation.
Facebook has made a U-turn over its controversial new advertising system Beacon after protests by users.
The system, called Beacon, allows other websites to tell your friends and family about some of your activities elsewhere on the internet – for example revealing that you have bought a particular DVD. In return for feeding the information back to Facebook, the other websites get a free advertisement for their services.
However, because Beacon required users actively to opt out of having their information shared with other users, rather than opt in, it was accused of spoiling thousands of people’s Christmas surprises and – perhaps more importantly - damaging their privacy.
A group on the website calling itself “Facebook: Stop Invading My Privacy” has grown to more than 50,000 members, and several other organisations including political activism site MoveOn.org have protested about the new system.
After a week of pressure, the Silicon Valley company last night released a statement saying that it would be changing Beacon so that users would not have their information about their activities published automatically.
“We appreciate feedback from all Facebook users and made some changes to Beacon in the past day,” the company said. “Users now have more control over the stories that get published to their Mini-Feed and potentially to their friends’ News Feeds.”
However, the company did not apologise and it is still impossible for Facebook users to opt out of Beacon entirely.
The furore was reminiscent of privacy protests when Facebook first adopted its News Feed, the automatically generated, potted list of updates from your friends on the social network. Thousands argued that the system invaded their privacy, but user pressure relented after the company made some tweaks and it has now become one of the website’s most popular features.