Another privacy 'win' by Facebook.

I'm somewhat surprised by this feature, it would be fairly easy to abuse. If you were suddenly upset with say Starbucks you could change your photo and use your 'check-in' comments to push negative advertising as well. Not only negative advertising, but targeted negative advertising.

I bet the brand gets a "veto" flag, probably with automatic mood analysis built in.

Businesses will soon be paying for their own negative feedback... uhm fail?

I'd wager that there'll be at least some sort of Bayesian "hate" filtering. That means something like "Fuck McDonalds" won't trigger the ad.

No idea how they'd deal with positive-word, negative-connotation satire, though.

That suggests that there is an easy way to opt out: Just include some profanity each time you check in.

There's no way that they can implement thorough manual curation at the scale Facebook is at. Even better, as the parent suggested, use positive words to avoid any automated sentiment analysis: Starbucks makes my colon sing!

Sounds just like reddit ads.

I believe that business can bypass this to an extent by only opting to sponsor stories generated via applications...I read that in another article somewhere yesterday. runs off to find said article

"Currently, marketers don't have the ability to know or plan word-of-mouth endorsements as part of their campaigns,"

I thought that was the point of word-of-mouth endorsements.

  Please select your FaceSenseWords campaign options:
    [ ] Grass Roots Astroturfing
    [ ] Viral
    [ ] Passionate plea by a bored 14 year old on youtube
    [ ] Flashmob protest
    [ ] DDoS of competitor

Facebook or 4chan?

Exactly, otherwise it is known as propaganda.

I doubt this will really provoke much outrage. Remember, half of Facebook is a vanity service. If you're "liking" Starbucks or checking-in at TGI Fridays, you want to show off to your friends that you like that brand.

Yeah, one of the major differences relative to Beacon is that Beacon brought your activity on other sites into Facebook ("gammarator bought 'Bourne Ultimatum' tickets on Fandango.com!") Here it's taking check-ins and likes that the user has personally posted within the Facebook ecosystem.

That said, I expect all-caps viral status messages about this in about two weeks.

So I have a question: why is this a problem? Or, more specifically, how is this non-trivially different from the way that Facebook has worked to date? It seems almost identical to the way that your activity would otherwise have been broadcast, save the fact that it is in a more prominent, advertising-y context. It's not like the check-in didn't happen, or that it wouldn't have shown up anyway in the exact same activity feeds that are instead receiving the ad form of the check-in.

For some reason it seems like users have this pathology where they are upset whenever and however web companies try to monetize site usage, regardless of justification or intrusiveness. But, then again, I don't understand how people justify using AdBlock either, and lots of people (at least on Reddit) got really pissed about that when Ars Technica tried to block AdBlock users.

Also, how is this like Beacon at all? People are already checking in at these places on Facebook. The check-ins are just getting sponsored by the subjects of those check-ins. It's not like there's any surreptitious data sharing, apart from letting Starbucks know that I checked in there (which they would also know from the fact that I bought a Latte).

Exactly. People, especially here, try hard to justify their hatred for facebook. If this were foursquare finding a way to monetize their check-ins it would be praised.

its starting to feel like Facebook is pushing the limits of click-wrap EULAs so far that the general public will demand EULA reform.

I already want EULA reform. Ever print out the one for MS Office? Sheesh. The last one I had (2003) was, as I recall, 27 pages of 9 point font.

Ah, but subscription-based services are where you can find the true EULA joy--for instance, not only is the iPhone app store EULA 20 pages of text which you have to read on a phone screen, it also pops up once every few months with mysterious changes, the content of which I've never found, that you must accept.

That is so funny- I remember the last iTunes update they did this, too. I think they tried to spell out the change but I didn't understand it.

This is the kind of shit that will do Facebook in eventually. People don't like being exploited for someone else's profit so overtly.

There are echoes here of the "Beacon" fiasco --- in which Facebook was briefly broadcasting users' activity on third-party sites (particularly on-line purchases) to their Facebook friends, whether the users wanted that broadcast or not. This isn't quite the same thing, but you can certainly imagine it going wrong in some of the same ways...

This needs one more feature. If Starbucks uses your likeness, you should get a free drink.

You're already getting something for free - you get to use Facebook to communicate with friends and share photos, free of charge.

Revenue sharing is definitely one possible reaction to the privacy backlash.

But an unlikely one. Like all privacy "outrage" when it comes to Facebook, this might follow a predictable cycle -- firestorm in the news, some minor concession by Facebook, and eventually no one even remembers the issue down the line.

What if BMW uses my likeness?

It's nice how Facebook keeps validating the decision to opt out of Facebook.

Beacon lives on. Facebook is too smart for the average bear.

...or it's users are not savvy/don't care enough to stop them.