In continuation of yesterday’s post regarding social networks, advertising applications and privacy, David Weinberger offers a great overview of the situation with Facebook in his post entitled, “Facebook’s Privacy Default,” via The Huffington Post.

Facebook makes an astounding array of information available to its advertisers so that they can precisely “target” likely suspects. This is great for advertisers, and — given that the ad space is going to be filled up one way or another — it’s arguably better for users to see ads that are relevant than are irrelevant. (The counter-argument is that targeting makes ads more successfully manipulative, not just more relevant.) Facebook is scrupulous, however, about not letting advertisers know the identity of those to whom it’s advertising. So, Blockbuster might buy ads for all men aged 18-24 who have joined the Pauly Shore fan club, but Blockbuster doesn’t know who those people are.

When Facebook talks about preserving user privacy, that’s what they have in mind: They do not let advertisers tie the information about you in a profile (your age, interests, etc.) to the information that identifies you in your profile (your name, email address, etc.). That is the informational view of privacy, and Facebook is likely to continue to get that right, if only because so many governmental agencies are watching them. I also think that the Facebook folks understand and support the value of maintaining privacy in this sense.