This is a complete non-story. Every Facebook profile is owned by an ad firm. Every Gmail account is owned by an ad firm. Every + account is owned by an ad firm. Every Yahoo Mail account is owned by a bit of an ad firm - ditto for Live. Generally, every free service is selling you and your time. This really shouldn't be surprising.
Agreed, but the novelty here is that the personal information was given to one organization, but is now owned in toto by another organization.
It's different than Google's insight into your buying interests from Gmail, because they're the same organization.
People should know this intellectually at least, but they haven't been faced with the implications.
Analogy: I give a box of old family photos to a cousin. The cousin later needs medical treatment, and sells the photos to a pawn shop. Then the shop goes through the photos looking for the really outrageous ones to sell to third parties. I get really mad. Who do I blame?
Facebook sells ads against anonymous user demographics. Specific Media now owns the actual profiles, with everything from sexual orientation to medical history they may contain.
Out of 50 million profiles...how many are active? How many haven't logged in in the last 12 months? How many are bots? I was under the impression that Myspace is used about as much as Geocities these days.
Did anyone really expect them NOT to sell this data for ad purposes?
Services like Google, Myspace and facebook are free. Don't kid yourself, they are doing this for money. If you pay - demand privacy. If it's free - come on, you did put all the personal data voluntarily, didn't you?
All they use is statistical data. Be fair - no one really cares about your individual private data, unless you're rich and/or famous. But then you will be much more cautious about sharing personal data on the web. You will, won't you?
That is really interesting thinking! Take a look at how everybody thinks about facebook selling some user data or google following you everywhere you are and everything you do. This post opens up a totally new argument for why this companys should not have so much power over your privacy. Maybe they are really good companies, really never doing anything evil.
But maybe someday they get sold and actually nobody knows what happens then. There is probably no variable for moral and ethics in the function of selling your company and the data you acquired over your users. It's like opening a completely new dimension to think about the problem of privacy, at least to me. Thanks for sharing!
It's a very interesting/strategic acquisition, but I doubt that anything good can come out of it for the user. I find it unlikely that this media company will try to improve the MySpace experience, instead they will likely focus on monetizing and ad-targeting.
[+] [-] 46Bit|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bproper|14 years ago|reply
People who buy ads against Facebook and Google profiles don't get to see specific info about the users they are targeting.
In this case the firm doing the targeting is also the firm that can see all the profile data.
[+] [-] mturmon|14 years ago|reply
It's different than Google's insight into your buying interests from Gmail, because they're the same organization.
People should know this intellectually at least, but they haven't been faced with the implications.
Analogy: I give a box of old family photos to a cousin. The cousin later needs medical treatment, and sells the photos to a pawn shop. Then the shop goes through the photos looking for the really outrageous ones to sell to third parties. I get really mad. Who do I blame?
[+] [-] muddylemon|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] taylorlb|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bproper|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arcdrag|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tomek_Kopczuk|14 years ago|reply
Services like Google, Myspace and facebook are free. Don't kid yourself, they are doing this for money. If you pay - demand privacy. If it's free - come on, you did put all the personal data voluntarily, didn't you?
All they use is statistical data. Be fair - no one really cares about your individual private data, unless you're rich and/or famous. But then you will be much more cautious about sharing personal data on the web. You will, won't you?
[+] [-] z2amiller|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bugsy|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VladRussian|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] erikb|14 years ago|reply
But maybe someday they get sold and actually nobody knows what happens then. There is probably no variable for moral and ethics in the function of selling your company and the data you acquired over your users. It's like opening a completely new dimension to think about the problem of privacy, at least to me. Thanks for sharing!
[+] [-] itg|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skarayan|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
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