New facebook advertising program causes controversy

By Joseph Gauger
Collegian Editor
December 5, 2007

Users of Facebook, the popular online social network, launched a widespread protest recently, after being caught off guard by the service’s new advertising program, Beacon. The company responded by making a series of changes in how the advertisements are triggered.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the new ad system, which allows advertisers to send messages to the friends of their customers, Nov. 6. Most of the site’s clients paid little attention to the news at first, but a vocal minority balked at Beacon’s method of acquiring consent from its users.

According to the New York Times, Facebook users were initially able to choose whether or not messages were sent to others but had no choice over whether they received ads from their friends. Under the program in its original form, users making purchases from an online service partnered with Facebook were presented with a small on-screen notice alerting them that friends would be notified of the transaction. If the user did not opt out in 20 seconds, consent was assumed and the notice disappeared.

Privacy advocates quickly expressed their concerns about Beacon Ads.  MoveOn.org, a liberal pressure group, campaigned against the program from its announcement and started a Facebook group in protest Nov. 20. In nine days the group had grown to over 50,000 members, or one out of every 1,000 Facebook users.

An anonymous Facebook representative explained the changes in the Beacon system to MoveOn.org Nov. 29, saying that messages will now be sent only with the explicit agreement of users. Consent will no longer be assumed if users do not respond to Facebook’s request to send stories to others. MoveOn.org published the statement on its Facebook group.

La Salle students seemed primarily concerned with the commercialization of Facebook rather than a loss of privacy. Junior elementary/special education major Melissa Palfy complained that the ads amount to spam and said Facebook would be less enjoyable if users were forced to read involuntary notifications about others’ shopping habits.

 

“Facebook is being corrupted since they took away the ‘.edu’ requirement,” she said, referring to the fact that the site was originally restricted to college students.

Zuckerberg asserted when he announced Beacon that the change will make the social network less overtly commercial by replacing traditional banner ads. He told the Times that this shift in perception would happen because ads will be attached to comments by users and not sent by sellers themselves.

The Beacon program was designed to give retailers such as Epicurious.com, Fandango and Blockbuster access to consumers who can easily avoid ads on television and in other media. Zuckerberg predicted that the program would revolutionize the way advertisers reach potential customers. Students were skeptical as to how effective the new ad format would be, however.

“Advertisers go where the people are. It’s [a form of] direct marketing,” said senior accounting and information technology major Matt Vanacore. “The best thing to do is just ignore it.”

gaugerj1@lasalle.edu