The New Social Network: Should We All Be Scared of Facebook?

By Rob Scott
September 27, 2011

Writing for his blog Scripting News, Dave Winer offers an interesting perspective (and perhaps frightening downside) to Facebook’s new philosophy of sharing all media, all the time.
Since Facebook will be seeking out information on you to report on your behavior (even when you are logged out), the floodgates have opened for a range of possible negative repercussions. Winer suggests this type of “virus-like” behavior warrants “a bad name, like phishing, or spam, or cyber-stalking.”
“What clued me in was an article on ReadWriteWeb that says that just reading an article on their site may create an announcement on Facebook,” he explains. “Something like: ‘Bull Mancuso just read a tutorial explaining how to kill a member of another crime family.’ Bull didn’t comment. He didn’t press a Like button. He just visited a Web page. And an announcement was made on his behalf to everyone who follows him on Facebook. Not just his friends, because now they have subscribers, who can be total strangers.”
This type of information may ultimately be used in lawsuits, divorces and arrests. If the government did this, it would bring up Fourth Amendment issues.
Winer offers a solution (of sorts): “Until Facebook owns the browser we use, there is a simple way to opt-out, and I’ve done it myself. Log out of Facebook. And if Facebook had a shred of honor they would make their cookie expire, right now, for everyone, and require a re-log-in, and a preference choice to stay permanently logged-in. With a warning about the new snooping they’re doing. Probably a warning not written by them, but by Berkman, the EFF or the FTC.”

Topics: Dave Winer, EFF, Facebook, FTC, Like, Network, Social, Social Media, Social Network

8 Comments

Rob Scott September 27, 2011 at 06:24am

For those interested in the ReadWriteWeb article “Read in Facebook — It’s Not a Button, So Be Careful What You Click!” (that inspired Winer’s post):
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/read_in_facebook_social_news_apps.php

Rob Scott September 27, 2011 at 06:24am

Rob Scott September 27, 2011 at 07:15am

David Wertheimer forwarded this interesting related post (thanks, David!)…
A more frightening technical expose on how Facebook’s cookies report to Facebook the sites you’re visiting even when you’re logged out of Facebook:
http://nikcub.appspot.com/logging-out-of-facebook-is-not-enough

George Gerba September 27, 2011 at 08:18am

My advice to a High School student would be first, don’t use it, second turn everything off and get a connection blocking agent to limit Facebook phone calls home…

They will live to regret it over and over again if they just let it wash over them.

David Wertheimer September 27, 2011 at 08:34am

George, I share your concerns in the short-term, but I don’t agree in the long-term. I think the potential for social-content integration is fantastic. We need to be lobbying Facebook to clean up some of these severe privacy problems and ensure that publishers and users get what they want and expect when they cruise the content-o-sphere.