• November 23, 2007

Liberal advocacy organization MoveOn.org said that a protest group it started Tuesday to stop Facebook from revealing members' online purchases had swelled to 6,000 by Wednesday.

Specifically, MoveOn is protesting a new Facebook feature called Beacon that allows members to automatically update friends about purchases or other actions taken on third-party sites. The activist group says the mechanism violates users' privacy rights despite policies that allow members to "opt out" of the program.

MoveOn is calling for an "opt in" policy instead. In a statement issued Tuesday, Facebook said MoveOn misrepresents how Beacon works, and that information from other sites is only shared with a trusted network of friends. The new feature is part of a broader advertising platform that Facebook launched earlier this month for the social networking site.

--Mark Walsh