Facebook reins in 'Beacon' ad system

By Kevin Allison in San Francisco
updated 6:10 a.m. CT, Fri., Nov. 30, 2007

Facebook, the online social networking website, on Thursday moved to placate users concerned about the threats to privacy posed by its new "Beacon" advertising system.

The move comes a week after MoveOn.org, the non-profit public policy advocacy group, joined a growing chorus of critics of the new service, which alerts users' networks of online "friends" about things they buy on other websites.

Friends of a Facebook user who buys a book on Amazon.com, for example, may see a message about the purchase when they log onto Facebook.

Facebook argues that Beacon offers multiple opportunities for users to decline to publish messages sent from partner websites. But some online shoppers complain that these warnings are not always given, or that they are easy to miss.

Facebook said on Thursday that it had made changes to the way users approve Beacon messages before they are published.

Facebook said the changes mean that, from now on, "no stories will be published without users proactively consenting."

Previously, Beacon stories would publish automatically unless a user said "no" to a publication request within a certain amount of time. Now users will now be asked to explicitly authorise the publication of each Beacone message, according to Facebook.

Facebook stopped short of offering a way for users to opt out of the service altogether - a move that is likely to disappoint some critics, including MoveOn.org, which has called on Facebook to "add a way for users to permanently say no" to Beacon.
(Read full story here...)

[MMDays 專欄] 當聖杯出現裂痕：Facebook 的政策大轉彎與 Social Network 的極限是？