Sometimes I think this blog covers too many different topics and I should separate out things to different blogs. Here's a case where two different areas converge. I would not have expected Concurring Opinions, a law blog I read, to have a story about facebook which refers to this story from the Wall Street Journal Law Blog.
"Last Sunday the Law Blog purchased three tickets to Bee Movie on Fandango, the movie site. After we did this, Facebook automatically updated our profile to say, 'Peter bought Bee Movie on Fandango.'"
Fandango and Facebook now have a business relationship. if you ever glanced at those privacy polices (I know you've never read one) they mention "partners" or "third parties" and that's what they've become. The blogs looked into the privacy policies and yeah they allow this, but they're buried in 2474 and 3514 word legalese documents. And they change without notice. Concurring Opinions ends with:
"There's another way to protect people's privacy -- opt-in. If Fandango wants to share your information with Facebook, it should ask for your consent first before doing so. Simply providing a privacy policy, a verbose and lengthy document that nobody reads and that is subject to change at any moment isn't sufficient. You don't consent just because they assume you do. If Facebook wants to disclose what you're doing and buying on other websites, or use your name or image in an ad, then it should ask you. Instead, these companies hide behind thousands of words of legalese, claiming that by merely providing a little link to these policies at the bottom of their websites, you've consented to them the second you start using the site. This isn't meaningful consent. And it isn't a meaningful way to protect consumer privacy."
I checked my facebook privacy settings and there's a (new?) category for "External Websites" which says "You can edit your privacy settings for external websites sending stories to your profile." If I go to edit it, no external sites are listed and it says "No sites have tried sending stories to your profile." So you can't restrict privacy before stuff has actually leaked out. Stupid. Stupid enough that facebook will have to fix this soon.
Only a week prior, Concurring Opinions posted about facebook's new ad policy. They post an ad and include pictures and names of facebook profiles mentioning something about it. E.g., "Meagan Marks gave a 4-star rating to the movie Top Gun". However, Meagan might have given that rating but not expected her name and likeness to be used in an ad.
"What is deemed to be valid consent to appear in the ads? It seems as though Facebook might be assuming that if a person talks about a product, then he or she consents to being used in an advertisement for it. But such an assumption might be wrong, and the use of a person's name or image in an advertisement without that person's consent might constitute a violation of the appropriation of name or likeness tort. According to the Restatement (Second) of Torts § 652C: 'One who appropriates to his own use or benefit the name or likeness of another is subject to liability to the other for invasion of his privacy.'"
Facebook has some work to do. Maybe they need someone older than 23 years old in a prominent position.
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