The latest round of Facebook privacy updates has seen a public facing push to give Facebook users greater control over who can access their data, except of course if the person wanting access to your data happens to be adding Facebook to their payroll.
In a somewhat Orwelian move, Facebook's new Beacon ad system erodes your privacy one step further by sharing your private online data with up to 44 Facebook affiliate partners, before you are aware that this will happen. You are given the right to opt-out of this ad system, but only if you visit all of its members and do so manually.
Also, in some cases the reverse of this happens where “non-Facebook persons who utilized the Facebook Beacon Activated Affiliate Websites were not told that their transaction, and indeed, every transaction they engaged in upon the Website was being communicated to a third party (Facebook) with whom they had no relationship whatsoever” (excerpt from the suit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California).
As a Facebook developer we are perhaps more aware than most of the potential flaws within the platform, and as active online participants we are keen to keep our users private and personal data private and personal.
We can of course totally sympathise with anyone who is trying to monetize their social app, but if you aren't protecting the fundamental rights of your users, pretty soon you won't have any right?
Perhaps it is time for someone to build the ClassAction 2.0 app to focus peoples discontent and help bring Facebook, DoubleClick and Atlas into line.
