Sunday 2 October 2011

Facebook sharing should not mean endorsing

Sometime ago I reconciled myself to the fact that Facebook would make money - and so save me the cost of their service - by selling data about me to advertisers.  I understand the bargain; I get Facebook's tremendous value 'for free' and get adverts targeted to me, that I can ignore or not.

This story (from the Financial Times) takes things a lot further though.  It suggests Facebook is considering using everything I do online that is captured by the apps newly linked to Facebook (like Spotify) to make me an endorser of whatever it is I happened to have read/listened to/watched/written...

I am happy with the earlier bargain but I am not so sure about this.  Being the passive recipient of adverts targeted to me is very different to being an active part of a third party's ad campaign to my friends and family.

Sounds a bit like one of those terrible sweat shop jobs where people are forced to phone friends and family to flog stuff they know the friends wouldn't otherwise buy in a million years.  

Anyone remember what they used to think of friends that did that?  Exactly.


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