consumer rights continued
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 [...]
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.
left behind bottle caps
are the miscellaneous moments of life we tuck away and the pieces of wisdom we collect daily
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
archives
- March 2011 (1)
- February 2011 (2)
- November 2010 (4)
- October 2010 (1)
- August 2010 (1)
- July 2010 (1)
- June 2010 (5)
- May 2010 (1)
- March 2010 (1)
- February 2010 (4)
- January 2010 (4)
- December 2009 (2)
- November 2009 (1)
- June 2009 (4)
- May 2009 (1)
- April 2009 (8)
- March 2009 (3)
- January 2009 (2)
- December 2008 (12)
- November 2008 (4)
- October 2008 (9)
- September 2008 (4)
- June 2008 (2)
- April 2008 (2)
- February 2008 (7)
- January 2008 (4)
- December 2007 (8)
- November 2007 (24)
- October 2007 (21)
- September 2007 (3)

