Moveon Facebook

November 21, 2007 8:03 AM

Moveon.org has now joined the fight. Now you can join too. Previously.
posted by gman (75 comments total)

but when you join does it show up on your facebook news feed?
posted by quonsar at 8:05 AM on November 21, 2007 [4 favorites]

"Oh my gosh, my cousins entire christmas shopping list this week was displayed on the [Facebook News] feed. thats so messed up. This has gotta stop!" - Tasha Valdez from Michigan:

If we don't fight back now, other web sites will follow Facebook's misguided policy as they attempt to appeal to corporate advertisers. By inviting lots of our friends to join this important group, we can send a strong signal that Internet privacy must be protected.

LULZ! MoveOn, fighting the good fight.
posted by dead_ at 8:06 AM on November 21, 2007

What else should I join?
posted by Falconetti at 8:06 AM on November 21, 2007

Facebook's misguided policy

I'll just say that I'm glad we've Moved On™ from criticizing the other, less important misguided policy that has killed near a half-million people in Iraq. Netroots rule!
posted by dead_ at 8:11 AM on November 21, 2007

Ever since they made using Facebook and Amazon a requirement to get federally funded healthcare I haven't been able to hide anything from anyone...

oh thank goodness the nightmare is over.
posted by GuyZero at 8:11 AM on November 21, 2007 [2 favorites]

What's this Facebook?
posted by HuronBob at 8:14 AM on November 21, 2007

"I saw my gf bought an item i had been saying i wanted... so now part of my christmas gift has been ruined. Facebook is ruining christmas!" - Matthew Helfgott from NY


Facebook is ruining Christmas, while Metafilter is Christmas year round!
posted by trueluk at 8:15 AM on November 21, 2007

What else should I join?

ask this guy for an invite.
posted by gman at 8:15 AM on November 21, 2007

Why does Facebook hate Christianity?
posted by Dr-Baa at 8:16 AM on November 21, 2007

This is the most important issue of our generation.
posted by psmealey at 8:16 AM on November 21, 2007

More seriously, though, I've always wondered why people who have objections with social networking sites try to fight them from within the site itself. Are they truly that tied to the self-validation machine that is Flickr/Facebook/MySpace/insert-SNS-here that they cannot simply vote against the company by deleting their account or migrating to another service?

I guess we are all too wrapped up in our online persona: it's no longer enough to go on vacation, you have to post it to Flickr, blog about it, add it to your World Travels thingamajig on Facebook, Twitter it, etc--if you don't do all of that, did your trip really even happen?

Just opt out by deleting yourself from the fucking circle-jerk that is Facebook instead of making a pathetic group that reveals your status as a slave to the machinery of the site.
posted by dead_ at 8:21 AM on November 21, 2007 [3 favorites]

I still don't understand what the problem is. How can external sites post stuff on your facebook page without knowing your facebook login information?
posted by demiurge at 8:24 AM on November 21, 2007

Hmm, in another thread I said that you would have to associate your accounts yourself for this to work, but it looks like I was wrong. Wow, I'm kind of amazed that facebook would operate this way, that's amazingly obnoxious.

As far as moveon getting involved in this, look, they take up the issues that matter to their members, and they can work on more then one issue at once. given the amount of power corporations have over our lives now, it's not unreasonable for political groups lobby corporations when their policies affect their constituents, the same way they would the government.
posted by delmoi at 8:26 AM on November 21, 2007

Why the fuck is moveon wasting their time on this bullshit?
posted by empath at 8:27 AM on November 21, 2007

Yeah, I'm not seeing why people who don't want the privacy invasion just don't delete their facebook account. I signed up there about six months ago because a few mefi users said they were trying to contact me through the site and couldn't find me. Ever since I joined, I've gotten a steady stream of 20 emails a day from people adding me or inviting me to something and none of it is useful.

I'm still not clear on how or where someone linked their account on a shopping site with facebook, but I've seen it bite a few friends in the ass already with their xmas shopping. For me, I'm going to delete my account and avoid it altogether.
posted by mathowie at 8:28 AM on November 21, 2007

If only Bill O'Reilly would find out that Facebook is ruining Christmas then he can be on the same side of an issue as Moveon.
posted by drezdn at 8:28 AM on November 21, 2007 [3 favorites]

I don't use Facebook, so I might be missing something here - but wouldn't the other sites like Amazon be the main culprits here?

Aren't they selling or giving away your customer info to FB in the first place?
posted by uncle harold at 8:31 AM on November 21, 2007

The solution here, if you object to how creepy Facebook is, would be to stop using Facebook. You don't need a petition.
posted by chunking express at 8:31 AM on November 21, 2007

Maybe people, for the most part, like and enjoy Facebook, but dislike a particular feature. I use it as a central location to keep up with family members who are far away (which is 99% of my family) - we talk to each other, we post pictures, we comment on the pictures. For the most part, I'm fine with Facebook. So why would I just up and leave it if one thing about it bothers me, rather than make the attempt to get that one thing fixed?

That being said, I'm still not clear how purchases on other websites get linked to Facebook accounts without the user somehow setting that link up. I've made an Amazon purchase recently and it did not appear on my Facebook feed.
posted by DrGirlfriend at 8:31 AM on November 21, 2007

Tracebook.
posted by kuujjuarapik at 8:32 AM on November 21, 2007

How can external sites post stuff on your facebook page without knowing your facebook login information?

Cookie sharing. There's a common server that all these services can access that dumps a cookie in your browser. The services can now cross-reference all their independent data silos via this cookie. DoubleClick did the samer thing.

It is a pretty bold move by Facebook to throw privacy to the wind like that, but their excuse is that there's a buried control that allows you to turn it off.
posted by GuyZero at 8:34 AM on November 21, 2007

i'm giving facebook accounts to iraqi children for christmas this year!
posted by quonsar at 8:35 AM on November 21, 2007 [1 favorite]

I use it as a central location to keep up with family members who are far away (which is 99% of my family) - we talk to each other, we post pictures, we comment on the pictures.

back when it was still web 1.0, we did that on our own freakin' web sites.
posted by quonsar at 8:37 AM on November 21, 2007

back when it was still web 1.0, we did that on our own freakin' web sites.

Is the point that we should be setting up our own websites?
posted by DrGirlfriend at 8:38 AM on November 21, 2007

"Poking" someone is not "Keeping in touch."

Neither is updating your "favorite quotes."
posted by dead_ at 8:39 AM on November 21, 2007 [2 favorites]

it's an option. of course, you might have to actually, you know, LEARN something. so maybe you should stick with the herd. baaaa!
posted by quonsar at 8:40 AM on November 21, 2007 [2 favorites]

demiurge: I still don't understand what the problem is. How can external sites post stuff on your facebook page without knowing your facebook login information?

Facebook's social ads (Facebook Beacon, specifically) allow third party sites to send requests back to facebook with information to post in the facebook's news feed. Since this request happens in your browser, Facebook can authenticate your browser and associate the site's data with your account. This basically allows any site on the Internet (assuming they're accepted as Facebook advertisers) to post information about you on your facebook feed. For example, mathowie could advertise on the Facebook and send data back to the site arbitrarily ("null terminated favorited a comment!"). This would be done without you needing to join a specific "metafilter" group or application.

(If you're interested, here's the javasacript in question)
posted by null terminated at 8:40 AM on November 21, 2007

"ask this guy for an invite."

Music: R KELLY!

lol
posted by mr_crash_davis at 8:43 AM on November 21, 2007

Oh I see! Okay, so if someone tells me I'm a slave to the machine for using Facebook, even though it generally works for me, I should stop using Facebook and instead become the slave to that person's machine! Okay! Gotcha!
posted by DrGirlfriend at 8:44 AM on November 21, 2007

Is the point that we should be setting up our own websites?

For individuals, it's not necessarily a big deal yet, but in the long run using your own site for things that you may want to save (like a blog) is a good idea, at the very least as a back up.

When you put your content in the hands of someone else, you're locked into their service and the possibility that they could go out of business or change incredibly.

For an example, my wife lost several years of blog entries when Diary-X went down.

It's probably not a huge thing for individuals, but among bands I know, too many stopped focusing on a cool website and put their web effort behind their Myspace page.

For a while, they were getting new listeners because people were really excited about finding new bands via Myspace, but now, Myspace has become a bit of cesspool, filled with slimy porn spambots and useless cruft.

The bands that focussed on just Myspace will have a harder time connecting with the people that jump ship from the service.
posted by drezdn at 8:45 AM on November 21, 2007

Yes, come unto my machine. That was the point of my post. Thanks.
posted by dead_ at 8:45 AM on November 21, 2007

I see, so sites that are accepted as advertisers are "trusted" in a certain way and can communicate with the Facebook server. This should certainly be made opt-in by Facebook, having it be opt-out is unkind to users.
posted by demiurge at 8:48 AM on November 21, 2007

Well, dead_, you did imply I was a sheep, so....yeah. I think that's why I surmised that the point of your post was to imply that I should be doing things the way you see fit.

The point I was trying to make is that making the attempt to fix something is, to me, preferable than just abandoning it and moving on -- especially if in general, it's something that works for you.
posted by DrGirlfriend at 8:52 AM on November 21, 2007

How can people quit? Facebook is the replacement for email!
posted by Wood at 8:53 AM on November 21, 2007

Okay! Gotcha!

no, i don't think you have.

anyway, what drezdn said. how pissed would you be if blog rican just up and disappeared on you one day?

when i started messing around on the web, you built a website for stuff like this. once the consumerbot masses started coming online, they had no clue at all that you could do things for yourself online, and that it was fun and cool and empowering and educational. instead they went for shiny centralized "services" provided by others, which is, ya know, fine and all, but not fun and cool and empowering and educational, and not at all safe for your data, and not at all guaranteed to be there tomorrow.
posted by quonsar at 8:53 AM on November 21, 2007

oh, and dead_ did not imply that you were a sheep, DrGirlfriend. reading is a useful skill online. i recommend you work on implementing that.
posted by quonsar at 8:54 AM on November 21, 2007

Oh I see! Okay, so if someone tells me I'm a slave to the machine for using Facebook, even though it generally works for me, I should stop using Facebook and instead become the slave to that person's machine! Okay! Gotcha!

I think people are confused as to why Facebook exists.

Let us look at television. How do TV broadcasters make money? They sell ads. You may see TV a the free-fun-entertainment-box but if TV stations were farmers, we viewers would be the cows. Or corn. They harvest us and sell us off.

Facebook is exactly the same except that they can collect a ton of data on you, your preferences, your demographic data and your social networks. So they can sell you off for more money.

Anyone shocked that Facebook is selling them out has missed the central point of Facebook. Facebook exists to sell its users out. That you get photo sharing and Scrabulous in return is incidental.

Your personal data is your to do with as you wish. Sell out or don't.
posted by GuyZero at 8:55 AM on November 21, 2007

Maybe people, for the most part, like and enjoy Facebook, but dislike a particular feature. I use it as a central location to keep up with family members who are far away (which is 99% of my family) - we talk to each other, we post pictures, we comment on the pictures.

I say this as not a snark, but because I literally do not understand: Why don't you and your family members email each other or IM each other? And aren't there places you can post photos to for everyone to view if it is too difficult to email them?
posted by flarbuse at 8:56 AM on November 21, 2007

DrGirlfriend, sorry, not trying to imply that your a sheep--you might want to check with quonsar on that one.

Anyway! I'm only saying that trying to "fix" Facebook by creating a group is a losing battle: the company already knows they've got you--the best you could do was make a group, using their protocol, their system, their setup--do they really think you're going to quit the site? Hell no, they're going to call your bluff, and keep calling your bluff, and after long enough you'll forget what the problem was in the first place.

After all, you use Facebook to stay in touch with people; how could anyone ever give that up! What's the alternative!?
posted by dead_ at 8:58 AM on November 21, 2007

*you're
posted by dead_ at 8:59 AM on November 21, 2007

flarbuse - yes, we use mail, but by setting up a (private) Facebook group, there is a spot where tons of pictures can be dumped and we can add comments about them, where conversation threads can be started, etc. I suppose we use email for more specific, one-on-one conversations, while in this group 12 of us converse. I don't know, it seems to be a one-stop kind of thing that so far, is working just fine.
posted by DrGirlfriend at 9:00 AM on November 21, 2007

Crap! Sorry, dead_ ! Yeah, quonsar, you said I was a sheep! Baaaa to you.
posted by DrGirlfriend at 9:03 AM on November 21, 2007

Well, the group is private to the outside world, but not to Facebook, which might be good enough for you. As others have pointed out, Facebook exists to collect information it can sell to advertisers, and probably the CIA. That you can post photos there is a nice touch.

Also, with respect to photos:

By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.

(Mind you, they are nice enough to stop using your shit if you remove it from the site.)
posted by chunking express at 9:05 AM on November 21, 2007

Do you know what this post made me want to do?
Check my facebook.
posted by daniel striped tiger at 9:05 AM on November 21, 2007

If MoveOn has picked up the fight you know it is already lost.

Can we at least have Christmas TC special where Angela Lansburry defeats Facebook and saves Christmas?
posted by munchingzombie at 9:05 AM on November 21, 2007

quonsar: back when it was still web 1.0, we did that on our own freakin' web sites.

Bah! Back when I was a nipper, if I wanted to get in touch with my family I had to dig my way through 20 foot high piles of snow during a rain of frogs. Of course, in the old days we all had broken backs. And our family was made of marmalade so we'd get all sticky when we hugged them.

Web sites... bah! We were lucky we didn't get eaten by marmalade crazed junky grandmas who'd set upon us as soon as they saw the golden gleam of the sticky stuff through the snow.

A web site would've been a veritable heaven...
posted by Kattullus at 9:06 AM on November 21, 2007 [2 favorites]

mathowie: "Yeah, I'm not seeing why people who don't want the privacy invasion just don't delete their facebook account."

That's a weird argument, isn't it, Matt? Where I am, almost every single one of my friends is on Hyves, and maybe a handful on Myspace. Along with only very few Dutch people I know I'm on Facebook, mainly because the other two are fugly and profiles on Hyves are public (by default, at least). And I'm disappointed by this Facebook move, too.

Hate to fall into the draw-an-analogy trap, but seriously, it's like saying if you don't like getting spammed by wendell you should just quit Metafilter.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 9:12 AM on November 21, 2007

it's like Echelon for college kids
posted by matteo at 9:14 AM on November 21, 2007 [1 favorite]

"I've made an Amazon purchase recently and it did not appear on my Facebook feed."

That's probably because Amazon isn't a Facebook partner.

I'm going to keep repeating that in every Project Beacon thread until everyone realizes they've been getting their information from know-it-all bloggers who didn't RTFM.
posted by faster than a speeding bulette at 9:16 AM on November 21, 2007

Am I too old or not cool enough for Facebook? Is it some kind of sexual fetish site for online facials?
posted by doctorschlock at 9:22 AM on November 21, 2007

This post would have made a very good comment in yesterday's Facebook thread.
posted by Reggie Digest at 9:25 AM on November 21, 2007

Maybe I'm missing something, but can someone explain this statement from facebook?

User privacy is extremely important to Facebook. We designed Facebook Beacon to enable effortless sharing, but we've also put in features to protect user privacy. When you send an action to Facebook, the user is immediately alerted of the story you wish to publish and will be alerted again when they sign into Facebook. The user can choose to opt out of the story in either instance, but the user doesn't need to take any action for the story to be published on Facebook.


At first I took some comfort in that I would be alerted before any "story" was published about me and I could opt out of it being published, but look again - it says the user doesn't need to take any action for the story to be published. That makes it sound like the default is that the story will be published unless I take some affirmative action, which makes saying I'm given an option to opt out rather hollow.
posted by Muddler at 9:39 AM on November 21, 2007

Metafilter: ruining Christmas year-round
posted by not_on_display at 9:40 AM on November 21, 2007

faster than a speeding bulette: Just saw your post in Reggie Digest's thread - it was quite helpful.
posted by DrGirlfriend at 9:41 AM on November 21, 2007

To the "just stop using facebook" crowd:

Any attack on interent privacy affects all of us. This latest development sets a precedent that will eventually result in that scene from Minority Report where Tom Cruise walks into the mall and is assaulted by targeted holographic advertising.

Not to mention that web 2.0 seems increasingly to be about marrying every aspect of my internet use to consumerism. Man, internet is becoming the new TV. . .but much, much worse.
posted by flotson at 9:45 AM on November 21, 2007

To the "just stop using facebook" crowd: Any attack on interent privacy affects all of us.

I'm pretty sure this doesn't affect Facebook non-users.
posted by GuyZero at 9:59 AM on November 21, 2007

Yeah, I'm not seeing why people who don't want the privacy invasion just don't delete their facebook account. -- mathowie

Maybe they're not internet-famous and their friends aren't all A-List bloggers? I (obviously) don't have tons of people trying to friend me, since people need to know your real name. It's not like myspace where everyone tries to friend everyone else, and it's useful for keeping track of what friends are up too, communicating with them, and organizing activities.

it's an option. of course, you might have to actually, you know, LEARN something. so maybe you should stick with the herd. baaaa!

No, you would have to convince all your friends to learn HTML, and then convince them to maintain a website, and then you'd still need to log on to all of your friends websites independently in order to see information they'd only want you to see.

What I'd really like to see is a system where people can setup their own sites, and share authentication data with their friends. With browser support, this could be as seamless as facebook. Nose Rub is one implementation of this idea. So quonsar, why not promote noserub if you want people without technical skills to do "their own thing".

The bottom line here is that unless you have an easy way for your friends to setup and maintain pages, then moving yourself off facebook is useless. Unless you want a social network of one, which doesn't sound like too much fun to me.
posted by delmoi at 10:08 AM on November 21, 2007

delmoi, but there were already sites where users could create profiles, share pictures, share what was going on in their world, and write about their lives without knowing HTML.

It really seems like the reason some people have jumped from the older services is that it's all about keeping an audience.

As more people moved to posting about their lives, less people were posting about them on places like livejournal. The people that wanted to keep an audience of their friends moved to Myspace and started posting there.

Now, people are moving to Facebook and posting about their lives there. So if you want to keep up with your internet friends and in turn have them keep up with you, you have to move to Facebook.

Ideally, in the future, people won't have to switch services, as someone creates a good "Trillian" for the social networking sites that allows you to read Facebook from Myspace. Maybe Google's Openid will pull this off, but it's not in Facebook's best interest to get involved because then users wouldn't be locked into Facebook.
posted by drezdn at 10:27 AM on November 21, 2007

A few days ago, before this this Beacon thing blew up (or at least, before I had heard of it), I almost signed up at Facebook. The sign-up process asked me to verify that I've read the terms of use.

I read the terms of use. They were ridiculous.

Excerpt:

We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to change, modify, add, or delete portions of these Terms of Use at any time without further notice. If we do this, we will post the changes to these Terms of Use on this page and will indicate at the top of this page the date these terms were last revised. Your continued use of the Service or the Site after any such changes constitutes your acceptance of the new Terms of Use. If you do not agree to abide by these or any future Terms of Use, do not use or access (or continue to use or access) the Service or the Site. It is your responsibility to regularly check the Site to determine if there have been changes to these Terms of Use and to review such changes.

We reserve the right to reserve the right to require you to give us your children for blood sacrifice. We don't need to notify you.

Beware of the leopard!
posted by Anything at 10:30 AM on November 21, 2007

Anyone know if the new XSS blocking feature in the Firefox NoScript extension prevents this? I know some of the Facebook features you can add throw up warnings for me already...was just wondering if that would keep this sort of information sharing from happening too?
posted by JaredSeth at 10:43 AM on November 21, 2007

I think all you have to do is block cookies from specific Facebook URLs. It's not XSS.
posted by GuyZero at 10:45 AM on November 21, 2007

Anything, the terms of use for MySpace, LiveJournal and Vox, (and those are the only three I checked) all contain identical language to what you posted. That is absolutely standard language, even for less participatory sites.
posted by George_Spiggott at 10:56 AM on November 21, 2007

George_Spiggott: Anything, the terms of use for MySpace, LiveJournal and Vox, (and those are the only three I checked) all contain identical language to what you posted. That is absolutely standard language, even for less participatory sites.

That, if true, makes it no less ridiculous, and I would not sign up for any of those sites either.
posted by Anything at 11:03 AM on November 21, 2007

And now that you've brought the trend to my attention, I think I'll go get rid of my Yahoo account, which I've used for Flickr, although I'm more worried about sites that specialize in gathering social networking data in particular.
posted by Anything at 11:09 AM on November 21, 2007

This is not a huge human rights violation or a good reason to cancel Xmas but it is pretty fucking jacked. 3rd party sites are going to send pings to Facebook so people there can see what you've been up to on those sites? Nuts. Stupid. Retailers will spam the shit out of this capability. And for Facebook's part... it's just hubris. Bad feature. I don't give a crap about Facebook for the most part but for people who do, this is lame. There's no way to pre-emptively opt out of this feature entirely. You have to wait for others sites to do this to you and then opt out of them individually. Stupid.
posted by scarabic at 11:40 AM on November 21, 2007

If I added the filter

http://www.facebook.com/beacon/*

to my adblocker, would that stop websites from sending my personal information back to Facebook via Beacon? Or would it just disable the opt-out pop-up?
posted by tepidmonkey at 11:57 AM on November 21, 2007

I just found the answer to my own question, and it is: yes, adding the filter "http://*facebook.com/beacon/*" stops Beacon's Javascript attempts to transmit information.
posted by tepidmonkey at 12:07 PM on November 21, 2007

I know that theoretically it would be better for every single person that I'm friends with to write, from scratch, their own bio page, photo host, blog, authenticated/spam-resistant comments pages, message boards, and XML feeds for changes to all of the above, as well as a portal that taps into all of one's friends' feeds and displays the updates in one central location, as well as interoperable glue code so that other people's profiles could be linked via photo tags and the like, as well as a single authentication service so that one only has to log in once and one's identity is saved when one comments on anyone else's pages, as well as privacy controls that restrict the display of one's content to certain specific people or groups of people, as well as a unified search function that allows one to find other people one would like to connect with, as well as an elegant plugin architecture for adding new functionality, as well as a magical Play-Doh ponymaker, as well as a pretty pretty rainbow cookiedust factory made out of love and elves, as well as a flying pirate schooner constructed from money and children's fantasies, ad nauseam.

Since that's never going to fucking happen, maybe you guys can understand why I prefer being able to do all that with the hundreds of friends of mine from my hometown, from my college, from my various travels, and from anywhere else I happen to continue meeting people, regardless of their level of computer knowledge and skill, on a website that none of us built by hand. Oh look, a friend of mine from ten years ago is engaged now, and I didn't have to find out by checking the websites of every single person I have ever known, one at a time, to find this information out.

Not being a big fan of facebook oneself shouldn't prevent one from being able to recognize its utility for others. I mean, I know that somewhere the CIA is keeping track of my favorite bands, and I wish they weren't. But you know what, even my handmade website, and yours, and a bunch of other ones are going to start getting fucked up in a couple of years, and you're probably going to resent whatever dick chides all of us who haven't been sending double prints of every photo we take via mail to all of our friends, and haven't organized and regularly parsed a phone tree of all of our acquaintances to catch up on their latest developments, because everyone knows that there's no real privacy on the Internet and you were just a slave to the content this whole time, you dumb sheep.
posted by cobra_high_tigers at 12:49 PM on November 21, 2007 [1 favorite]

I'm pretty sure this doesn't affect Facebook non-users.

No, not at present. But if it works, then it'll become standard practice. And further invasive technologies will follow.

Nip it in the bud, I say.
posted by flotson at 1:27 PM on November 21, 2007

Nip it in the bud, I say.

yeah. i already have a tv. and so far, it doesn't watch back.
posted by quonsar at 1:35 PM on November 21, 2007

The confusion about how much opting-out a user needs to do is inadvertently explained by the Facebook help page for this feature:

You can click 'close' or simply ignore the notification in which case the story will be sent to Facebook, but will not be published on the site. Next time you navigate to the Facebook Home page after interacting with an affiliate site, you’ll receive a second reminder that the affiliate website is about to publish a story on your behalf. If you select ‘See More’ and then click the 'X' next to any story, the story will not be published. If you click 'close' or navigate away from your home page, the external story will then be published in your Mini-Feed and potentially the News Feeds of your friends.

Translating: If the users ignore the supposed opt-in/out messages, they've accidentally opted in. I think we can all agree this is a bad design, and should be fixed. Until then, users can protect themselves by reading the notification and just clicking 'no'. Part of the problem here seems to be user laziness.

Back to the topic: I suspect MoveOn has foolishly picked a fight they won't win. Once Facebook tweaks some features to placate its users (just like they did with the newsfeed feature), everyone will accept it and use it. Believe it or not, there are a lot of people out there who like others knowing what they've bought.

Gosh, I wish there was a term for that. It would make this discussion so much easier.
posted by faster than a speeding bulette at 1:56 PM on November 21, 2007

I thought it was impossible to delete / kill a facebook account. How to do so isn't documented anywhere on the site I could find.
posted by dobbs at 6:34 PM on November 21, 2007

Oops, my mistake--it's under "account" and it's simply Deactivate, rather than cancel.
posted by dobbs at 6:38 PM on November 21, 2007

So do you need to have facebook logged in and open for this to happen or just have it accessed from the same computer? What about computers that see multiple users? What about Internet cafes?

I'm still not exactly clear how it ties the info to your facebook account. I checked out the group on facebook but all they had was an annoying flash "demo", some links to wafer thin news stories, and "OMG Christmas is ruined!" comments.

Can someone just spell it out for me? (If I was more adept, I'd read the javascript linked earlier)
posted by ODiV at 11:09 PM on November 21, 2007

Snoop-and-Serve advertising is what i call it...

pretty unethical - making presumptions as opposed to asking permission. As I work in the digital advertising industry, if you are interested you can read my comments on all this below:

facebooks plans to sell my garbage
hunting season starts as facebook opens its floodgates
facebook to offer snoop and serve advertising
posted by feesch at 8:26 AM on December 1, 2007