Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt has taken to the company's
blog to justify the site's
proposal to
share information about members -- including their names, pictures and their friends' names --
with outside publishers.
"In sum, the core idea behind this test is to work with partners to enable them to present you with a better, more relevant, and tailored experience when you visit
their sites," he gushes. "While we have not finalized these features or partnerships, we think this is an exciting opportunity to make surfing the web a smoother and more engaging experience for
people who use Facebook."
Schnitt stresses that the third-party sites "will be pre-selected, reviewed, and bound by contracts with Facebook" and that they will allow users to opt out of the
program.
But his post doesn't address a critical question: If this program is going to be so beneficial to users, why not launch it on an opt-in basis?
Currently, many
publishers already allow users to sign in and personalize their experience. People who haven't done so don't want to. For Facebook to say that people can opt out ignores the reality that many people
don't realize that they're sharing information until after the fact. After all, Beacon also was launched on an opt-out basis, but people still were stunned to see news of their e-commerce activity
shared on Facebook because they didn't pay any attention to the opt-out boxes (some of which were only visible for a few seconds).
Facebook says that users will be able to delete any
information collected by the third-party sites but, again, it's not clear that people will realize their data is being collected and used without their explicit permission until long after the fact.
This decision to automatically log people into third-party sites seems to violate every expectation people have about how the Web works. Oddly, Facebook is pressing the issue at a time when
the Federal Trade Commission has made clear that it's concerned about whether the site violates users'
privacy.
Whether the FTC plans to take action remains unknown. But Facebook's never-ending attempts to share information about users certainly doesn't help it demonstrate that it can
protect people's privacy on its own.