Facebook Allows Advertisers to Use Your Posts

I previously wrote “Facebook and Japan: The Story of Clashing Cultures” about Japan’s rejection of the social site. Japan’s social networkers are very private. They belong to social networking sites which allow them to use fake names and avatars and give little to no personal information. Facebook is completely public and with previous privacy issues, it has been hard for the company to enter the Japanese market. Now, there might be another problem halting privacy advocates from the site. “Facebook’s ‘Sponsered Stories’ Turns Your Posts into Ads” by Laurie Segall reports Facebook will be taking posts mentioning particular brands, products, or services and allowing advertisers to use them as “sponsored stories” to post on your friends pages.

There is a video posted by Facebook to explain the advertising procedure. As of now hundreds of users have liked the video with some exclaiming they can’t wait. The problem with the advertising plan is no one can opt out. The video assures only friends will see the "sponsored story" but how does this help Facebook’s privacy image?

It is expected that sites like Facebook would use advertising to make money. But to allow advertisers to use posts without giving users the ability to protect their posts is ridiculous. Many have private pages and strict privacy settings to prevent such a thing from happening. And yet, it seems, Facebook is going to ignore the privacy settings it claims to respect.

According to the article, Facebook previously attempted to combine posts and advertising with Beacon. Beacon would post online purchases on users’ wall. The result: online purchases posted to their friends. The service was sued and was abandoned by Facebook in 2009.

Facebook has failed at this before. They have run into privacy issues and this “sponsored story” scheme is not going to help. While some don’t mind being used as an advertising post, some do. Those users who want to opt out should be given this option. The U.S. market is never going to be as private as the Japanese market, but the U.S. media coverage about Facebook’s privacy failures means there are U.S. users who are getting frustrated with Facebook’s continued negligence to offer complete control over their content and privacy. If Facebook were to improve their privacy standards and give opt out choices from advertising methods such as sponsored stories, it would help Facebook conquer their controversy and possibly move into other markets.