MoveOn’s Facebook Crusade: eBay, IAC, CBS, NYTimes Get Beacon Privacy Pass
Data security is EVERYONE’S responsibliity.
BUT, is the MoveOn.org Facebook crusade really a people-powered one, as the “501(c)(4)” organization claims while soliciting signatures for its Facebook “privacy” petition, “members” for its (anti) Facebook group AND cash contributions to fund MoveOn’s own operations?
There is decidedly ONE person powering the latest MoveOn PR campaign aimed at pressuring privately owned, opt-in, free to the consumer online social networking Web properties to operate their businesses the way MoveOn prefers: Adam Green, a MoveOn “spokesperson.”
Green is featured in the Associated Press story, “Facebook users raise privacy complaints over new tracking for marketing” and is apparently making the blog rounds, forwarding purported evidence of Facebook “censorship” to Michael Arrington for publication at TechCrunch, for example.
MoveOn’s (anti) Facebook group is undoubtedly gaining “members”; Such a virtually meaningless “act” is hardly one of civic engagement or protest, though.
Where is the real Facebooker outrage, directed at ALL of the supposed privacy villians in the new, marketer improved Facebook world?
Charlene Li of Forrester–a “power” Facebook user with, surprsingly, two different Facebook accounts and profiles, and Forrester’s expert on social computing–laments her “close encounter with Facebook Beacon” at the Forrester blogs, following her ecommerce transactions at third-party site Overstock.com. Li’s embarrassment over the “news” of her Overstock.com purchase of a “Basin Square Coffee Table” being included in one of her two Facebook news feeds yields a stern warning to Facebook, with Overstock given a near complete pass.
Should Facebook really be the BIGGEST privacy villian in Forrester’s Li personal case, not Overstock, Beacon host and the company that actually instigated the “coffee table” affair with special cookie tracking of her Overstock transaction?
Moreover, why is MoveOn merely calling out Facebook for a “massive privacy breach,” given that it takes two Websites to Beacon tango?
The MoveOn homepage hails: “FACEBOOK, THE SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE, IS VIOLATING OUR PRIVACY” because “private purchases made on other sites display on Facebook News Feeds.”
WHAT ABOUT THOSE “OTHER SITES” MOVEON, ALL 44 OF THEM?
Why ISN’T MoveOn targeting Facebook Beacon partners, including eBay, IAC, Overstock.com, Fandango, Blockbuster.com, Travelocity, Bluefly.com, CBS, NYTImes.com, Sony in its purported zeal to “protect online privacy.”
The MoveOn pitch for why “Facebook must respect privacy”:
When you buy a book or movie online do you want that information automatically shared with the world on Facebook?
MoveOn hyperbole suggests Facebook is spying on every Website on the World Wide Web. The truth of the Internet Beacon privacy matter though is that third-party Websites–eBay, CBS, NYTImes, IAC, Sony–are proactively tracking their own users in order to market themselves to Facebook users.
How concerned really is MoveOn about consumer privacy on the Web if it is not calling Facebook Beacon “partners in crime” to task as well as Facebook?
Whats more, if MoveOn really was concerned about U.S. citizens’ privacy, it would call for all to cease willingly abdicating their personal lives to Facebook, MySpace…rather than using Facebook itself for PR stunts!
MORE: MoveOn.org Facebook Petition: What 501(c)(4) Civic Action?
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