I'm not sure if this goes here, but...

[justgoto]

Facebook's Beacon service turns users into living ads, but at what cost?

On November 6, Facebook launched an advertising system called Beacon that consists of a partnership between the popular social network and 44 other sites. The system allows a user's activity outside of Facebook to be recorded and then posted on his or her news feed

Comments

[tavalya_ra]

Oh my God. I keep my LiveJournal account seperate from my public identity, which is what I use Facebook for. Another garantee that LJ won't see a cent from me- I don't want to create the link. I may just have to quit Facebook over this.

[estelle]

They know who you are because you log into your account.

Site X who partnered up with Facebook checks if you're also logged in facebook and/or have their cookie. If you are, they send info about your activity on their site to Facebook
Facebook publishes the info about your activity on Site X on your Facebook minifeed.

It doesn't matter if you have different email addresses, they know who you are because you surf/log into Site X and Facebook with the same computer.
Not all of the Websites in the above post send info about your activity to Facebook automatically. LiveJournal thankfully does not send it automatically, you'd have to opt in.
But they could.
And if you use any of the other sites and do not want your activity to appear on Facebook you should opt out your Facebook account or block beacon on your computer.

[tavalya_ra]

That is so, so creepy. It's a complete and utter invasion of privacy. I'm not quite sure how to opt out on Facebook (the controls are a bit weird), but I think I might delete my account. I do want to stay in touch with my RL friends and it's great for that, but this is too much.

[kali921]

Question from the floor: is this something that the user on Facebook opts into autmoatically, or do you have to opt out of it to get away from it?

[estelle]

automatic turned on function from Facebook's side but LJ announced that you'd have to enable it first.

FAQ: http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=279

[donutgirl]

I don't understand -- how can facebook automatically pick up my LJ posts when I never even told them I have an LJ? I mean, my LJ isn't so anonymous that a private eye couldn't figure out who I am, but how would a bot know the two are connected?

[estelle]

They know who you are because you log into your account.

Site X who partnered up with Facebook checks if you're also logged in facebook and/or have their cookie. If you are, they send info about your activity on their site to Facebook
Facebook publishes the info about your activity on Site X on your Facebook minifeed.

Not all of the Websites in the above post send info about your activity to Facebook automatically. LiveJournal thankfully does not send it automatically, you'd have to opt in.
But they could.
And if you use any of the other sites and do not want your activity to appear on Facebook you should opt out your Facebook account or block beacon on your computer.

Re: Six Apart is Opt-In

[matgb]

*cough*I never opted in (because I forgot) but some of my posts got ported across-I saw the nice little display at the top of my profile. Given I import my feed there as notes anyway I have no problem with this, but looks like there might've been a glitch.

*goes to opt in*

Re: I never opted in (because I forgot) but some of my posts got ported across

[justgoto]

I can only assume, that is the way it is intended to work. At least that is how the faq page, privacy setting page, his comment is worded; and evidently, how it works. It is an "opt-in" in order to "opt-out" every single time.

*counting the seconds until I here how a mistake has been made*

*homer simpson voice* Mmm, Facebook bacon service.

[pyrop]

The kicker is, Facebook already had an opt-in feature to import your LJ posts (or your posts on any blogging service with an RSS feed) into Facebook Notes, which would then show up on your newsfeed. It's not quite as simple, but it works perfectly fine once you set it up and is much less creepy.

Thank you, Facebook and 6A, for giving us a solution to a problem that had been solved years ago.

Re: *homer simpson voice* Mmm, Facebook bacon service.

[matgb]

It's glitchy and buggy, as most things are with RSS, and requires knowing what RSS is-and a huge chunk of my friends list, mostly smart people, don't have a clue, and get me to set syndicated accounts up &c anyway.

This is nice and easy, and specifically promotes LJ, so I'm doing both. I get that some want to keep their accounts separate, but, y'know, my real name is my username, so not me.

[intrepia]

I just saw an article saying that Facebook is responding to the deluge of complaints they got about this by making it opt-in rather than opt-out.