All FACEBOOK news

Your Photos Now Featured
in Facebook Ads
You did read the End User License Agreement, right?

This past Friday it surfaced that Facebook started including user profile photos in ads run with in the Facebook network. It?s widely known that if a product or service is vouched for by a close friend the liklihood that you?ll investigate and buy the product or use the service increases. The marketing and advertising folks at Facebook know their stuff and they?re taking full advantage of their terms of use to increase click through rates on ads and monetize their community.

What does this mean to you? It means if you don?t dig into the privacy settings and opt out of having your profile photo or perhaps other photos of yours used in ads, you could end up with your photo(s) next to an online dating service ad or perhaps something as awkward as a Viagra ad.

While many wondered why all the fuss about the photo unfriendly Facebook Terms of Use I hope you now understand. Facebook is an advertising engine looking to exploit trust between you and your network to maximize profits. The fact that they force you to opt-out versus opt-in to this type of system shows their true intentions contradicting past statements. As before if you use Facebook be aware and be diligent in checking to see what they?re up to and how they?re using your creative content.

[Pobs]

Ok.... bastards!

Right.... I think I haz this.

Go to Privacy Settings. Select the "New Feed and Wall". Then select the "Facebook Ads" option. And opt out. I think this is the thing which is referenced. I couldn't find anything else.

[Frothy Afterbirth]

Also go to Privacy Settings, click "Search" and uncheck the box that say "Pages I am a fan of". Then rethink how you want to appear in Search Visibility. The other reason about the fan pages is below.


Facebook Adding 'Fan' Pages To Public Search Listings
In a potential boost for marketers, Facebook will now show in public search listings that branded Facebook Pages users have designated as their favorite brands. So if someone is a fan of the Gap, that will appear in a search listing and link back to the company's Facebook Page.

The social network opened up its network last year by making members' profile information available through Google and other search engines. The public search data included basic data such as a member's name, profile photo and photos of some friends. The idea was to allow people who are not registered members to be able to find friends who are on Facebook.

The new feature could help drive traffic to the more than 150,000 sites that marketers and others have set up on Facebook. The expanded public search entries include links to up to five Facebook Pages someone is a fan of.

"Considering that Facebook turned on links to Pages from about 120 million profile page public search listings, the number of new internal links to Pages on the Facebook.com domain this weekend likely increased by several hundred million," wrote Justin Smith, who runs the Inside Facebook Blog and reported on the expanded search listings this week.

So the Gap's 113,000 Facebook fans translate to as many links via search engines. U2's Facebook Page would generate 195,000 links and Barack Obama's would generate more than 3.1 million.

"This step by Facebook increases the weight Google will give to brand Pages," wrote Smith. "Brand and marketing managers should not be surprised to see their Facebook Pages rising in Google search results in the months ahead."

But potential traffic gains for branded Pages from search engine listings could be limited by Facebook's lack of focus on search engine optimization. "The way links on Facebook are structured right now, they don't have the type of permanence that search engines are looking for," said David Berkowitz, director of emerging media and client strategy at search engine marketing firm 360i.

He continued: "Facebook does evolve pretty quickly, but so far they've been a little behind the curve when it comes to SEO."

He also said it's not clear how Facebook will select which fan Pages are displayed in public search entries. Berkowitz noted, for instance, that the 10 Facebook friends shown on his profile through a Google search are not always the same. So Pages could likewise vary from one search to another.

A Facebook spokesperson said the company has begun notifying members of the change through an Engagement Ad--a new interactive unit formally launched this month--that will run on the home page for a couple of weeks to allow people to opt out of having a fan Page displayed in search results.

She added that users have the option to hide Pages from their public search listing at any time from the Facebook's search privacy page.

Nevertheless, Berkowitz added that inclusion in search listings could encourage more marketers to create Pages, which Facebook offers for free. "If this does start fueling search engine rankings, then, given how pervasive SEO is, that will help marketers go about creating these pages and developing them," he said.

For CondeNet, which has been an active marketer on Facebook, including fan Pages in search data is a welcome step. With roughly a dozen Facebook Pages for brands including Wired and Vanity Fair, the online arm of Conde Nast potentially has much to gain.

"We've been working with Facebook in many ways, in applications and advertising," said Sandor Marik, director of marketing for CondeNet. "So in terms of having more exposure in search pages, it can only help with all of those efforts."

In addition to helping drive more traffic to its branded sites on Facebook, he said the move could also help enhance the effectiveness of Facebook's Social Ads. These units--which appear as sponsored content in the News Feed or on the left side of the site--tell members which of their friends are fans of particular brands.

While pleased with the change, Marik said he hopes people searching for CondeNet properties "will end up going to one of our sites first."

How Facebook users will react to the broader disclosure of profile information on search engines is unclear, since most may not be aware of the expanded listings, which could take weeks or longer to be indexed by search engines.

When Facebook first opened up profiles to public search listings last year, a small proportion of users changed their privacy settings to block dissemination of their data, according to Inside Facebook's Smith. But 360i's Berkowitz suggested that members who "fan" a brand on Facebook have a limited expectation of privacy.

"When someone becomes a fan of a Page, it's a pretty explicit action you're taking, and it's pretty clear it's going to show up elsewhere on Facebook--so most users are going to welcome it, or at the very least not care," he said.

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Most of you know that Facebook has repeatedly changed its privacy options and conveniently forgets to inform its users of these changes. They have come under fire for this practice multiple times now. For some people privacy is a concern... others couldn't care less. If you don't care then these articles will not interest you.

Here's the latest.

Facebook Kills More Of Your Privacy For Cash
By Ben Popken on April 20, 2010 3:10 PM



Yesterday, Facebook announced an awesome new feature that lets anyone see your current city, hometown, education, work, likes, and interests, even if you've set your profile to private. Will this benefit individual users and their friends? Not unless the only thing you remember about your dear friend is that they enjoy leather-play and you're willing to scroll through reams of headshots to find them. No, this new privacy erosion is for the real clients of Facebook: advertisers, and the data-mining minions that toil on their behalf. However, there are two ways to be totally private.

The first is to change your age to under 18. Then your interests can only be seen by friends and family and verified networks, as per Facebook's policy for minors. Whoops, actually, you would have had to make your age under 18 when you signed up for Facebook. Tough noogies, they gotcha!




Facebook Further Reduces Your Control Over Personal Information

April 19th, 2010


Once upon a time, Facebook could be used simply to share your interests and information with a select small community of your own choosing. As Facebook's privacy policy once promised, "No personal information that you submit to Facebook will be available to any user of the Web Site who does not belong to at least one of the groups specified by you in your privacy settings."

How times have changed.

Today, Facebook removed its users' ability to control who can see their own interests and personal information. Certain parts of users' profiles, "including your current city, hometown, education and work, and likes and interests" will now be transformed into "connections," meaning that they will be shared publicly. If you don't want these parts of your profile to be made public, your only option is to delete them.

The example Facebook uses in its announcement is a page for "Cooking." Previously, you could list "cooking" as an activity you liked on your profile, but your name would not be added to any formal "Cooking" page. (Under the old system, you could become a "fan" of cooking if you wanted). But now, the new Cooking page will publicly display all of the millions of people who list cooking as an activity.

Cooking is not very controversial or privacy-sensitive, and thus makes for a good example from Facebook's perspective. Who would want to conceal their interest in cooking? Of course, the new program will also create public lists for controversial issues, such as an interest in abortion rights, gay marriage, marijuana, tea parties and so on.

But even for an innocuous interest like cooking, it?s not clear how this change is meant to benefit Facebook's users. An ordinary human is not going to look through the list of Facebook's millions of cooking fans. It's far too large. Only data miners and targeted advertisers have the time and inclination to delve that deeply.

There is one loophole ? tell Facebook you're under 18. Under Facebook's policy for minors, your interests would only be visible for friends and family and verified networks. You would not be publicly listed on these new connection pages. However, this only works as you set up a new account.

The new connections features benefit Facebook and its business partners, with little benefit to you. But what are you going to do about it? Facebook has consistently ignored demands from its users to create an easy "exit plan" for migrating their personal data to another social networking website, even as it has continued ? one small privacy policy update after another ? to reduce its users' control over their information.

The answer: Let Facebook hear your frustration. Last December, when Facebook announced a new round of privacy degradations, it provoked a potent combination of public outrage, legal threats, and government investigations. In response, Facebook listened to some criticism and walked-back a few of its changes. Now it will allow users to adjust the visibility of information in their profiles, such as hiding your friend list from other friends. If you want Facebook to walk back these new changes too, let them know how you feel.

source

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Here's an older article
Facebook's New Terms Of Service: "We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever."

February 15, 2009 11:14 PM



This post has generated a lot of responses, including from Facebook. Check them out here.

Facebook's terms of service (TOS) used to say that when you closed an account on their network, any rights they claimed to the original content you uploaded would expire. Not anymore.

Now, anything you upload to Facebook can be used by Facebook in any way they deem fit, forever, no matter what you do later.* Want to close your account? Good for you, but Facebook still has the right to do whatever it wants with your old content. They can even sublicense it if they want.

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That language is the same as in the old TOS, but there was an important couple of lines at the end of that section that have been removed:

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Furthermore, the "Termination" section near the end of the TOS states:

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Make sure you never upload anything you don't feel comfortable giving away forever, because it's Facebook's now.

source

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[rocker182]

Really if your so concerned about your privacy you should limit the info you post or you shouldn't be on any social networking site at all.Im on twitter,foursquare and facebook and i understand that these sites need to make a buck so i don't put really important stuff up

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I am concerned about my privacy. That's one reason why I am not on any social networking sites at all (except for Twitter which poses no threat).

Rocker i understand your viewpoint and i agree with what you are saying.... my beef is (well would be if i was on FB) the way in which companies are doing this stuff.

Facebook has said that anything that you put on FB becomes "theirs forever". All your info (which is data they sell) all your pictures... everything. So let us say that you just now found out about this data mining they are doing... so you go to erase any sensitive info from your profile, is it too late? Do they already have that info now to sell? I'm not sure but i think it's shitty for a company to change their TOS and conveniently not tell their users about it. If they had said "On April 20th we will be changing our TOS and privacy settings to blah blah blah... if you wish to omit anything, do it before this change goes into effect" or something to that effect it would be much more respectable.

BTW, i came across this:

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Also,

For Firefox users with an interest in this: Get TACO (Targeted Advertising Cookie Opt-Out), so your opt-out cookies won't accidentally be lost.

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Some more settings for those that weren't aware of them:

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For more tips on fixing privacy settings check out this absolutely great article - news.cnet.com/8301-19882_3-10413317-250.html

[gimmebeer]

accurate it is...

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while blocking one of them:

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anyways, they provide a "free" service, which they handle as they see fit. if they feel like your profile pic needs to be of a midget china man data can bring $,suit yourself or begone! forced to face the harsh life outside the internets...
of course, you can always choose not to use their service

any resemblance to dsf forum is not a coincidence

Shit, all the tech bloggers are really pissed about this new Facebook stuff. Even the EFF has gotten involved now.

For those of you that don't know what the EFF is: the EFF is an international non-profit digital rights advocacy and legal organization based in the United States.

Six Things You Need to Know About Facebook Connections
May 4th, 2010

"Connections." It's an innocent-sounding word. But it's at the heart of some of the worst of Facebook's recent changes.
- Kurt Opsahl

Facebook first announced Connections a few weeks ago, and EFF quickly wrote at length about the problems they created. Basically, Facebook has transformed substantial personal information ? including your hometown, education, work history, interests, and activities ? into "Connections." This allows far more people than ever before to see this information, regardless of whether you want them to.


Since then, our email inbox has been flooded with confused questions and reports about these changes. We've learned lots more about everyone's concerns and experiences. Drawing from this, here are six things you need to know about Connections:

1. Facebook will not let you share any of this information without using Connections. You cannot opt-out of Connections. If you refuse to play ball, Facebook will remove all unlinked information from your profile.
2. Facebook will not respect your old privacy settings in this transition. For example, if you had previously sought to share your Interests with "Only Friends," Facebook will now ignore this and share your Connections with "Everyone."
3. Facebook has removed your ability to restrict its use of this information. The new privacy controls only affect your information's "Visibility," not whether it is "publicly available."
   Explaining what "publicly available" means, Facebook writes:

   "Such information may, for example, be accessed by everyone on the Internet (including people not logged into Facebook), be indexed by third party search engines, and be imported, exported, distributed, and redistributed by us and others without privacy limitations."

4. Facebook will continue to store and use your Connections even after you delete them. Just because you can't see them doesn't mean they're not there. Even after you "delete" profile information, Facebook will remember it. We've also received reports that Facebook continues to use deleted profile information to help people find you through Facebook's search engine.
5. Facebook sometimes creates a Connection when you "Like" something. That "Like" button you see all over Facebook, and now all over the web? It too can sometimes add a Connection to your profile, without you even knowing it.
6. Your posts may show up on a Connection page even if you do not opt in to the Connection. If you use the name of a Connection in a post on your wall, it may show up on the Connection page, without you even knowing it. (For example, if you use the word "FBI" in a post).

You can send Facebook your comments on the new Connections here.







Source

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I have been reading (i dont have an FB so i cant say first hand) that facebook has 17 pages of privacy settings and NO Select All option so that you can opt out.... they want you to manually have to check each box on 17 pages.

(i dont see why this matters because even if you opt out now the "connections" still shares your info)

I kind of want to make a dummy account just to see what is going on with these crazy privacy settings.