Zuckerberg Flash: Facebook FREE VPN Is Advertising Supported
When the digerati universally hailed Mark Zukerberg as the newest tech God when he announced a proprietary software developement platform in May to spur Facebook growth–aka F8–I was the lone blogosphere voice to analyze Facebook’s Web domination ambitions and conclude why “Facebook is scarier than Google.”
How did I know, way back then, to beware a Facebook privacy quagmire? I READ THE FACEBOOK PRIVACY POLICY!
As the digerati now does a Facebook about face, reviling Zuckerberg for seeking to cover the costs of servicing a free-to-the-user Virtual Private Network 50 million strong, Jason Calacanis incredulously suggests who needs privacy policies anyway!
Calacanis to Facebookers:
Somewhere in the fine print I’m sure Facebook is letting people know that they are being sliced and diced, but if you ask 1,000 Facebook users if they opted into this list 1,000 would tell you no. That’s the real test: user awareness.
NO! User complicity is the real Facebook privacy issue, as I said in May: WHY IS FACEBOOK SCARIER THAN GOOGLE? Because each Facebook user knowingly and willingly provides an interested corporation with the intimate details of their daily personal and professional lives to enable persistent data records for the unique data mining profit advantage of the corporation.
In other Facebook privacy words, given that Facebook as “Big Brother” is consensual, there is no redress.
College students and professionals claiming ignorance about what Facebook may do with intimate user data willingly handed over to the Facebook servers for perpetutity is as disingenuous as smokers claiming surprise that smoke in the lungs can kill.
Calacanis naivete continues:
The only problem with Facebook’s opt-in advertising system is that the users who they are selling to marketers didn’t really opt-in. What they did do was fill out a profile in which they said they “liked Guitar Hero,” not that they “would like to get Guitar Hero” advertising.
Really? Mahalo readers don’t opt-in to being subjected to Google contextual ads either! A Mahalo fan reading about “Hulk Hogfan Divorce” does not say to Mahalo that he or she would like to get “Ads By Google” touting Divorce Attorneys.
Calacanis’ concluding warning to Zuckerberg: “The message from bloggers to Facebook is clear: if you’re a hog you’ll be slaughtered.”
HAH! The (digital) pen then IS mightier than the sword!
ALSO: MoveOn’s Facebook Crusade: eBay, IAC, CBS, NYTimes Get Beacon Privacy Pass and Intuit’s New Homestead: Local Advertising Revolution, or Evolution?