Facebook Responds to Pressure and Changes Invasive Ad System

In response to pressure from privacy advocates and an online petition signed by 55,000 of its members, Facebook has made some changes to its invasive ad system that we blogged about yesterday.

Facebook's new ad system silently collects information on the things you do on dozens of major websites and distills those action down into ads they show to your friends. Previously, these ads had appeared without any user interaction, and it was necessary to opt-out if you did not want Facebook to run the ad.

Facebook caused an uproar of unrest over the new ad system, and even lost a major a deal with Coca-Cola, one of its early partners in this new advertising program.

Late yesterday, Facebook changed the system to require that users click "okay" before an ad appears. These privacy improvements would likely have never happened if tens of thousands of users had not let Facebook know that they will not accept overly invasive ad systems.

There are, however, still problems with Facebook's ad system. Facebook still receives an electronic report of your web activity unless you find and click a time sensitive opt-out on each partnered page you visit. There is also still no way to opt-out of the program entirely. If you don't want to be bothered with multiple opt-in options for each partnered website, there is no way to turn the entire system off.

We created a fictitious Facebook account to test the new ad system, and we found even the new and improved system controls are not easy to use. When we visited the partnered website, Yelp, a pop-up tab appeared for about ten seconds on the very bottom right corner of the screen, telling us that we had the option to opt-out of sending our site-use information to our Facebook account. The pop-up tab then minimized itself and was even harder to find. After ten more seconds, it disappeared entirely. If we immediately traveled back to our Facebook page, it was only then that we were greeted with a front and center dialogue box letting us know which partnered sites had sent information to our Facebook account and asking us whether it was "okay" to publish this information to our friends.

The current opt-out process is still not adequate. The entire system should be opt-in and at a minimum, there should be one-stop way to opt-out.

Facebook's justification for not moving to an opt-in or universal opt-out is akin to try it, you'll like it. But, 55, 000 users have signed an online petition saying that they don't like it and they want an opt-in system. Facebook should actually listen to its users and make significant changes to its advertising model, rather than making some small tweaks and perhaps hoping that the issue dies down as the holidays approach.