Facebook Founder's Apology for Implementing Big Brotheresque Features -- Again!
In what is becoming at least an annual event, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg apologizes for Facebook's ham-handed, dunderheaded implementation of a new Facebook feature that not only invades the privacy of Facebook users, but settles in for a lengthy occupation.
Last year's apology was for rolling out the Facebook news feed ... a feature that, in its full original glory, let everyone else on Facebook know everything you were doing on Facebook:
The feature, which began on Tuesday, gave users constant updates on what their friends were doing, including when they signed others’ walls, put up photos, changed their relationship status or posted new notes.(Starkedny.com)
If that sounds vaguely creepy and unsettling, it was. "Stalker Feed" might have been a better name for it. Now I'm no paper-billionaire social website founder, but I could have told the Facebook guys that was a bad idea ahead of time. In fact, Facebook users did tell them, and how:
Within 3 days, 700,000 members had signed an online petition opposing the change. (Starkedny.com)
This led to the above-linked apology by Mark Zuckerberg in his blog, which began "
We really messed this one up. When we launched News Feed and Mini-Feed we were trying to provide you with a stream of information about your social world. Instead, we did a bad job of explaining what the new features were and an even worse job of giving you control of them. (The Facebook Blog)
Whereupon Facebook proceeded to add privacy controls, allowing users to control what items were broadcast to others in their automated news feed or to opt out of it altogether - in other words, what they should have done in the first place.
So why do I recall a year-old controversy and apology? Because in recent weeks Facebook has done the exact same thing — only worse!
To wit:
Because maybe the reason Facebook users didn't like theStalker News Feed feature last year was that it wasn't creepy and intrusive enough! Yeah, that's it! Let's go one better and stalk Facebookers all over the internet! They'll love it!
Uh ... no.
This time, not only did the inevitable Facebook user protest emerge, but Moveon.org took time out from protesting the war in Iraq to start a petition against the Beacon feature! Yeah ... it's that important!
The bottom line," MoveOn spokesman Adam Green said in an interview with CNET News.com, "is that no Facebook user should have their private purchases online posted for the entire world to see without their explicit opted-in permission." ( News.com)
After mounting a weak and wobbly defense of Beacon for several weeks, Facebook eventually backed down and made it easier to opt out of Beacon — you know, what they should have done in the first place. (Though even if you opt out, Facebook continues to track you across the ubiquitous internets ... they just don't publish your doings to your friends. You might try blocking Beacon at the source.)
Which brings us to Zuckerberg's latest apology:
Thoughts on Beacon
Mark Zuckerberg
This title reminds me of " Deep Thoughts, by Jack Handey". But I digress.
About a month ago, we released a new feature called Beacon to try to help people share information with their friends about things they do on the web.
Gee, thanks! I've been wondering how to help people better stalk me!
We've made a lot of mistakes building this feature, but we've made even more with how we've handled them. We simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it.
Well, he did get right to the apology. And he is the CEO, addressing his customers directly in the Facebook Blog, so this at least has the appearance of a sincere and forthright apology. He even acknowledges that "we" made mistakes, not the passive voice "mistakes were made" mistake makers who often plague companies.
While I am disappointed with our mistakes, we appreciate all the feedback we have received from our users. I'd like to discuss what we have learned and how we have improved Beacon.
Yeah, here's the thing, Mark. You got pretty much the exact same feedback last year with the whole News Feed mess. So you seem to be a little slow on this "learning" thing. Hint: it has a curve. Apparently, in your case, a steep one.
When we first thought of Beacon,
... and the untold millions of advertising dollars we hope to earn by strip-mining your online activities ...
our goal was to build a simple product to let people share information across sites with their friends. It had to be lightweight so it wouldn't get in people's way as they browsed the web, but also clear enough so people would be able to easily control what they shared.
I.e. we were kinda hoping you wouldn't notice Big Brother shadowing your every move.
We were excited about Beacon because we believe a lot of information people want to share isn't on Facebook, and if we found the right balance, Beacon would give people an easy and controlled way to share more of that information with their friends.
Also exciting ... the millions upon millions in advertising dollars mentioned above!
But we missed the right balance.
Ya think?
At first we tried to make it very lightweight so people wouldn't have to touch it for it to work. The problem with our initial approach of making it an opt-out system instead of opt-in was that if someone forgot to decline to share something, Beacon still went ahead and shared it with their friends.
"If someone forgot to decline to share something?" Ah ... yes. Very user friendly.
It took us too long after people started contacting us to change the product so that users had to explicitly approve what they wanted to share. Instead of acting quickly, we took too long to decide on the right solution. I'm not proud of the way we've handled this situation and I know we can do better.
Again, why didn't you learn this lesson last year?
Oh, right. The millions in advertising dollars. Which may have had something to do with your not acting quickly on the complaints. Because I notice it was only after advertisers started getting nervous about Beacon that you changed it.
Just saying.
Facebook has succeeded so far in part because it gives people control over what and how they share information. This is what makes Facebook a good utility, and in order to be a good feature, Beacon also needs to do the same. People need to be able to explicitly choose what they share, and they need to be able to turn Beacon off completely if they don't want to use it.
True.
This has been the philosophy behind our recent changes. Last week we changed Beacon to be an opt-in system, and today we're releasing a privacy control to turn off Beacon completely. You can find it here. If you select that you don't want to share some Beacon actions or if you turn off Beacon, then Facebook won't store those actions even when partners send them to Facebook.
(I told you! They still track you even if you turn it off.)
On behalf of everyone working at Facebook, I want to thank you for your feedback on Beacon over the past several weeks and hope that this new privacy control addresses any remaining issues we've heard about from you.
Thanks for taking the time to read this.
Mark
Thanks, Mark! See you next year when you apologize for forgetting all about the valuable lessons you learned in this episode and screw up even worse by having Facebook post real-time scans of users' brainwaves!
Last year's apology was for rolling out the Facebook news feed ... a feature that, in its full original glory, let everyone else on Facebook know everything you were doing on Facebook:
The feature, which began on Tuesday, gave users constant updates on what their friends were doing, including when they signed others’ walls, put up photos, changed their relationship status or posted new notes.(Starkedny.com)
If that sounds vaguely creepy and unsettling, it was. "Stalker Feed" might have been a better name for it. Now I'm no paper-billionaire social website founder, but I could have told the Facebook guys that was a bad idea ahead of time. In fact, Facebook users did tell them, and how:
Within 3 days, 700,000 members had signed an online petition opposing the change. (Starkedny.com)
This led to the above-linked apology by Mark Zuckerberg in his blog, which began "
We really messed this one up. When we launched News Feed and Mini-Feed we were trying to provide you with a stream of information about your social world. Instead, we did a bad job of explaining what the new features were and an even worse job of giving you control of them. (The Facebook Blog)
Whereupon Facebook proceeded to add privacy controls, allowing users to control what items were broadcast to others in their automated news feed or to opt out of it altogether - in other words, what they should have done in the first place.
So why do I recall a year-old controversy and apology? Because in recent weeks Facebook has done the exact same thing — only worse!
To wit:
Some users of the Facebook Inc. Web site have been startled by a new feature that tracks their activity outside of the site and shows it to their friends — renewing questions about the privacy implications of a growing practice of exploiting personal information in online advertising.
The social-networking service earlier this month began posting updates about users' activities on Web sites outside of Facebook and on commercial pages within Facebook — in some cases, alongside ads from the companies behind those Web sites or pages. Facebook is posting users' photos alongside certain advertisements, another feature that has alarmed some privacy advocates and users. For instance, a user who logs on to Facebook might see an update in a section of the site called the "news feed" noting the movie a friend rented from an online site, along with a photo of that friend and a movie-rental ad. (WSJ.com)Because maybe the reason Facebook users didn't like the
Uh ... no.
This time, not only did the inevitable Facebook user protest emerge, but Moveon.org took time out from protesting the war in Iraq to start a petition against the Beacon feature! Yeah ... it's that important!
The bottom line," MoveOn spokesman Adam Green said in an interview with CNET News.com, "is that no Facebook user should have their private purchases online posted for the entire world to see without their explicit opted-in permission." ( News.com)
After mounting a weak and wobbly defense of Beacon for several weeks, Facebook eventually backed down and made it easier to opt out of Beacon — you know, what they should have done in the first place. (Though even if you opt out, Facebook continues to track you across the ubiquitous internets ... they just don't publish your doings to your friends. You might try blocking Beacon at the source.)
Which brings us to Zuckerberg's latest apology:
Thoughts on Beacon
Mark Zuckerberg
This title reminds me of " Deep Thoughts, by Jack Handey". But I digress.
About a month ago, we released a new feature called Beacon to try to help people share information with their friends about things they do on the web.
Gee, thanks! I've been wondering how to help people better stalk me!
We've made a lot of mistakes building this feature, but we've made even more with how we've handled them. We simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it.
Well, he did get right to the apology. And he is the CEO, addressing his customers directly in the Facebook Blog, so this at least has the appearance of a sincere and forthright apology. He even acknowledges that "we" made mistakes, not the passive voice "mistakes were made" mistake makers who often plague companies.
While I am disappointed with our mistakes, we appreciate all the feedback we have received from our users. I'd like to discuss what we have learned and how we have improved Beacon.
Yeah, here's the thing, Mark. You got pretty much the exact same feedback last year with the whole News Feed mess. So you seem to be a little slow on this "learning" thing. Hint: it has a curve. Apparently, in your case, a steep one.
When we first thought of Beacon,
... and the untold millions of advertising dollars we hope to earn by strip-mining your online activities ...
our goal was to build a simple product to let people share information across sites with their friends. It had to be lightweight so it wouldn't get in people's way as they browsed the web, but also clear enough so people would be able to easily control what they shared.
I.e. we were kinda hoping you wouldn't notice Big Brother shadowing your every move.
We were excited about Beacon because we believe a lot of information people want to share isn't on Facebook, and if we found the right balance, Beacon would give people an easy and controlled way to share more of that information with their friends.
Also exciting ... the millions upon millions in advertising dollars mentioned above!
But we missed the right balance.
Ya think?
At first we tried to make it very lightweight so people wouldn't have to touch it for it to work. The problem with our initial approach of making it an opt-out system instead of opt-in was that if someone forgot to decline to share something, Beacon still went ahead and shared it with their friends.
"If someone forgot to decline to share something?" Ah ... yes. Very user friendly.
It took us too long after people started contacting us to change the product so that users had to explicitly approve what they wanted to share. Instead of acting quickly, we took too long to decide on the right solution. I'm not proud of the way we've handled this situation and I know we can do better.
Again, why didn't you learn this lesson last year?
Oh, right. The millions in advertising dollars. Which may have had something to do with your not acting quickly on the complaints. Because I notice it was only after advertisers started getting nervous about Beacon that you changed it.
Just saying.
Facebook has succeeded so far in part because it gives people control over what and how they share information. This is what makes Facebook a good utility, and in order to be a good feature, Beacon also needs to do the same. People need to be able to explicitly choose what they share, and they need to be able to turn Beacon off completely if they don't want to use it.
True.
This has been the philosophy behind our recent changes. Last week we changed Beacon to be an opt-in system, and today we're releasing a privacy control to turn off Beacon completely. You can find it here. If you select that you don't want to share some Beacon actions or if you turn off Beacon, then Facebook won't store those actions even when partners send them to Facebook.
(I told you! They still track you even if you turn it off.)
On behalf of everyone working at Facebook, I want to thank you for your feedback on Beacon over the past several weeks and hope that this new privacy control addresses any remaining issues we've heard about from you.
Thanks for taking the time to read this.
Mark
Thanks, Mark! See you next year when you apologize for forgetting all about the valuable lessons you learned in this episode and screw up even worse by having Facebook post real-time scans of users' brainwaves!
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