World Wide Web - Privacy Groups Challenge Facebook's Social Ads: "'Facebook is engaged in a bait-and-switch scheme,' said privacy advocate Jeff Chester, the founder and executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD). 'One minute it's urging people to join so they can express themselves and communicate with friends. The next minute, it's selling their personal profiles to the highest bid.'

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This past Saturday, any of my Facebook friends who checked their News Feed on the site saw that I purchased a Cuisinart Coffee Maker on Overstock.com. That bit of information was delivered courtesy of Facebook's Social Ads program, which enables businesses to leverage the viral-networking capabilities of Facebook by reporting what users buy online.

The Social Ads system, at least as implemented by Overstock, is nominally "opt-in." When I checked out of the Overstock shopping cart, a small pop-up appeared at the bottom of the screen, asking for permission to send information about my purchase to Facebook; if I clicked the "no, don't send" button, then presumably my friends would not see the report of what I purchased.

I purposely didn't do anything, and the pop-up slowly slid back down off the screen. In turned out that doing nothing is the equivalent of saying "yes," which in practical terms makes the Social Ads an opt-out system.

Privacy Concerns

The new advertising program is raising concerns among privacy advocates and some Facebook users. Greg Benedetto, a Facebook user in Canada, has founded the "Stand Up! Don't Let Facebook Invade Your Social Life with Ads!" group on Facebook, which currently has 337 members (out of Facebook's 53 million active users).

"This is by far the most unethical method of Web advertising I've come across," Benedetto wrote in the group's description. "I'll accept tailored advertising, but I will not accept my identity being used by companies to sell their products."

Privacy advocate Jeff Chester, the founder and executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD), offered a similar take. "Facebook is engaged in a bait-and-switch scheme," Chester said in a recent e-mail.

(Read Original Article - Via CIO Today.)