Funny how being just a few days blogging is like being a *weeks* late, huh? :)

Anyway, it sounds like a lot has been said about Facebook’s Beacon doing The Seemingly Right Thing by making Beacon 100% opt out, with a surprising amount being said by some of the larger mainstream media organizations.

Its late, but I think its worth mentioning that Mark Zuckerburg’s mea culpa doesn’t directly address the troubling evidence that Beacon transmits data to Facebook, irrespective of whether you’re logged in.  Which leads one to wonder even if you’ve opted out of Beacon, whether Facebook is still harvesting your data, as data is *still* sent to Facebook.

In the ongoing Privacy Boondogle that is Facebook, it seems some hard work by Stefan Berteau at Computer Associates has shown that with respect to Facebook’s Beacon, it really doesn’t matter what your opt in status means with respect to your data.

Om Malik queried some weeks ago when Social Ads was delivered about the possibility of personal data *still* being exchanged, even in the absence of the broadcast of such an exchange via your news feed, for example. That is, was data still being given to Facebook even if you switched off the notification that it be made public?

Did opting out of Facebook’s Beacon (even in its initial incarnation) actually mean opting out of Facebook *telling* everyone what you just did — or actually preventing the information being exchanged in the first place, and therefore not actually *not knowing* what you just did?

Well it looks like there’s a reason why he got such a mealy-mouthed answer, because it turns out that even if you’re *not* logged into Facebook, Facebook’s Beacon Affiliates / Partners / Minions will *STILL* send back information to Facebook!

Why does this matter?

Above and beyond the fact that opting out of “publishing the information to newsfeed” gives the impression that Facebook won’t actually be storing the information of the transaction (not just literally preventing the information being published), or even beyond the technical issue of it being sent to Facebook when you’re not even logged in, its the issue of behavioural profiling on a scale that would make Orson Wells have a heart attack. And yes, I’m quite aware he’s dead.

To wit:

“Facebook just received enough information to tie the activity I took on their affiliate to my individual account, which combined with the social data they already have, such as circles of friends, level of education, communication patterns, and geographic locations, would allow them to profile individual consumer behavior on a nearly unprecedented level of detail.“

Yes, its obviously a marketer’s wet dream, and we could go on to the nth degree and speculate what Facebook might do with said information. Perhaps in the future, for example, with Facebook being “opt out”, and its current Social Ads partnerships potentially being threatened by that, it might end up selling said information in desperation to boost its bottom line.

Outrageous, you might say? Facebook would never do that? It would be a violation of its own TOS?

Well, I’ve got to say that such possibilities aren’t out of the impossible to *me* anymore, because I guess its pretty much in line with the answer that Stefan Berteau got from Facebook with respect to his own findings on the capture of its user data.

You know. A bald-faced lie.

And I don’t know about you, but I have a hard time trusting people who lie to me.

(and with Mark Zuckerburg throwing the (face)book at 02138 for an alleged privacy violation, would this make him a hypocrite?)

{more from IdeaShower as well, who catches a Facebook executive either not actually knowing what’s going on, or inadvertently lying to a blogger}

Well, its official. Through a variety of efforts, it looks like Facebook has buckled to the perception that folks don’t like their activities being broadcast across the Facebook network. Mr. O’Neill has the details, but it sounds like that rather than automatically publishing stuff I bought, say that Dancing With The Stars Cardio DVD (did anyone else feel bad for Mel B?) — which I *swear* is for my wife — in the news feeds of my “friends”, it will now appear in my own profile for me authorize *first* before it gets sent out.

Better yet? If a Facebook user “forgets” to do anything about the notification (i.e. authorize or delete it), then the notification will actually go away. Furthermore, it sounds like this authorize / delete option will appear with every commercial transaction between Facebook’s social “partners” and any given Facebook user.

Clearly to privacy fans, this is a time to feel triumphant.

On the other hand, I can only wonder what this is going to do to Facebook’s bottom line. To go from default opted-in, to now, default opted-out, with the choice to opt-in actually *disappearing* if you forget to do anything about the notice? I could see the adoption of the service going from a rankled (and hoodwinked) 70% of Facebook users to a “happy-to-share-my-purchases” 10% or less.

In addition to wondering what this will do to Facebook’s evaluation, I also wonder if all of this will mean a restructuring of the deals Facebook cut with its partners? Of course the actual details of these deals are unknown to many / most / all of us, but if there was some lump sum paid out initially, will any of them ask for a portion of it back?

While the users who are left will clearly be “happier”, and a better representation of users who want to actually share their purchases, and therefore, hopefully a better “quality” of traffic that ultimately converts for these advertisers as the percentage of people clicking on any ads in the past has been utterly abysmal.

I guess the question remains is if these changes, from a marketing point of view, will make using Social Ads any more effective by weaning out folks who are uninterested — and more importantly, if the subsequent volume of traffic that remains is *enough* to justify what Facebook partners are paying Facebook.

Or, perhaps, is that “had” paid Facebook?

Looks like the movement by MoveOn and other privacy groups have really struck a chord with Facebook (Addendum: it looks like a few other organizations, such as Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy are filing motions with the Federal Trade Commission on the basis of privacy violations, which probably has some teeth to it as well) . According to Businessweek they are in fact re-thinking their “once-in-a-hundred-years” advertising revolution as a privacy blunder.

This is good news for everyone, of course, except for Facebook, who has yet to really monetize itself in earnest, and more importantly was really betting the farm on this play. Rather, they were using the hype *from* Facebook Beacon and its social ads to pump up its theoretical evaluation to score a huge infusion of cash from Microsoft, and huge deals with Fortune 500 companies as well.

What will be interesting *now* of course, is if Facebook Beacon does crumble, how *will* it affect the deals it cut? Will any of them expect a (partial) refund? (perhaps a “restructuring” of their initial deal) And if it does affect the perception of this “advertising revolution”, will it in turn affect Facebook’s theoretical evaluation?

I think the answer the latter is “almost certainly”, because while everyone will acknowledge how fast its growing, clearly much of the overage that Microsoft paid for a foot-hold (a 1.6% foot-hold) onto Mount Facebook is *because* of the social ads platform and the hype-therein (which, I think, shows what kind of showman Mark Zuckerburg really is).

What’s also kind of interesting, of course, is looking in retrospect how much of its new evaluation will $240M buy.

(Methinks the answer is “probably much more than 1%”).

Looks like the A-lister brigade is out in force against the opt-in lunacy that is Facebook Beacon. Or, so it would seem, anyway, with Doc Searls, Dave Winer, and Jason Calacanis (and a few others) making some good ol’ impassioned pleas To Do The Right Thing, as this kind of default opt-in status is deceptive, and as Mr. Calacanis eloquently puts it (and I suggest this without a hint of sarcasm) they are Data Hogs as they are “amassing tons of information, selling it under false pretense, and not sharing it with the folks who gave it to them”.

It all makes sense to me, of course.

Will it make sense — as well as the real essence of their cri de coeur — to … say, for instance my *brother*? Or my wife? Or, my non-tech friends? How about *your* non-tech friends?

I mean, will average Facebookers care?

Will they care that Facebook isn’t making available in an easy XML format a copy of all of their data and transactions, available for download at a push of a button? That Facebook is actively scouring the transactions of their life so that it might be monetized now — or later, for that matter?

Let’s phrase it another way.

Do average Facebookers know or care that almost everything they upload *TO* Facebook is then *owned* by Facebook? That everything could be used / potentially abused / sold off in all kinds of ways that makes Facebook Beacon sound like of kindergardenish?

Let’s boil it down even more.

Do you think most Facebook users have even *thought* about reading the Terms of Service?

In an age where we *still* — and will *continue* to until our children our teenagers — read about how an individual’s silly exploits become public knowledge unbeknownst to them, and that news about potentially indiscrete activities could jeopardize your current and future job prospects are still very much News …

The answer to all of the above questions is “Average Facebook users neither know, nor care about the intricacies and *importance* of owning, tending, and guarding, one’s personal data, information, and relationships — unless it directly and overtly impacts their own personal sense of privacy today.”

And Facebook knows it.

In fact, its billion dollar valuation hinges on it.

It hinges on the fact that somewhere deep inside Facebook, I am sure that marketers and venture capitalists are cooking up ways to milk the herd of all its worth without actually alerting the herd to what its doing.

You know, like that privacy thing about the news feed about a year ago.

And that’s all that it really boils down to.

As long as enough people don’t notice or complain about these issues around Facebook nothing will be done. Its in Facebook’s best interests, in fact, that nothing be done.

Getting back to the point at hand, though. Will the cries of the blogging intelligentia be *enough* to galvanize forces within and throughout Facebook? Maybe. Perhaps if there are enough slow news days in the upcoming days and weeks, this could get enough publicity in the mainstream media — via MoveOn.org, for example — for it to catalyze change through public pressure.

But methinks that best way it *could* be done is through a grassroots means *within* Facebook. Someone has to start a group — someone with thousands of friends (like, the limit — 5000) who knows thousands of other connectors — to spread the word.

Because it has to be an attitudinal change, really. And that’s hard to do when its coming from an outside force — it really has to come from within.

You know what I mean.

Getting people curious about what Facebook is really about and what they’re really doing.

Get people interested about what they’re giving up in exchange so that they don’t have to go through the onerous task of actually *emailing* people, but messaging them through Facebook.

Because only if we’re able to do that *first*, will we able to get people to care about Facebook handing over all their data.

Without caring about what Facebook can or can do, and what it does and doesn’t own, nobody will ever want to know or care about these other shenannigans, which make sense to you and I.

But not, say, people like my brother.

And perhaps your brother too.