Facebook, with an estimated 300 million users, and MySpace, with 115 million monthly visitors worldwide, are the two largest and most popular social networking sites in the United States. Both companies state that they do not distribute users’ information to third parties. However, advocacy groups concerned about online privacy rights and some users are increasingly wary about how these and other networking sites might be using and whether they are adequately protecting personal information.
A common source of discomfort is whether users’
personal information will be used to generate targeted ads directed at them. A recent manifestation of this wariness occurred February 4, 2009, after Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, quietly changed the terms of use that govern how and for how long Facebook can use users’ information posted to the popular Web site. About two weeks later, the consumer-advocacy blog Consumerist.com highlighted that the change in user policy would allow Facebook to continue to use information posted by users for marketing, promotional, or other purposes even after users had deleted the information from their Facebook accounts. Consumerist.
com stated that the change in policy would allow Facebook to do anything it wanted with posted content, for as long as it wanted (even after a user closed his or her Facebook account). Following this realization, many users and consumer privacy advocacy groups railed against the change in terms of use at Facebook. Presumably as a result of the public’s reaction, Zuckerberg declared two weeks after the initial change that the company would return to its original terms of use while the feedback was analyzed.
Zuckerberg announced that the company would work on a major revision of the terms and invited users to provide ideas on its Web site: “Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities.”
This wasn’t the first time that Facebook experienced problems related to user privacy. In November 2007, Facebook lauched an advertising program, Beacon, that was developed to track the purchasing and other activities of Facebook users on 44 Web sites and then send notifications of these activities to the users’ friends on Facebook. For example, if a user made an online purchase of a book on one of the 44 Web sites, this would act as an indirect referral to his or her friends on Facebook, which might spur additional purchases of the book. The problem started when a senior research engineer from a Palo Alto–based antispyware company, CA Inc., discovered that Beacon was also “tracking the activities of both members and nonmembers on Facebook and partner sites.” Moreover, the program was set up in such a way that a message would be sent to a user’s friends automatically unless the user figured out how to change his or her preferences on the Facebook Web site. Within two months of rolling out the Beacon software, CEO Zuckerberg apologized for how the rollout was handled and took steps to increase users’ privacy related to their activities on the partner sites.

Questions 1. What is your opinion regarding these online privacy issues? To what extent are you concerned about how your personal information on Facebook, MySpace, and Google is used? Explain.
2. Looking back at the section on “political influence tactics” in this chapter, which tactics did Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg use after he changed the original terms of use on February 4, 2009? Describe.
3. Of the stakeholders listed in the last paragraph of the case, which group do you think is most powerful in terms of shaping the future direction of online privacy issues? Explain.