Facebook launched their newest update this week with lots of fanfare. Not ready to comment yet on functionality and changes made, but want to address the apparent glaring invasion of privacy issue with their new Ticker broadcast function and ability of users to Opt out of it.
Since the update, just about every action you make on Facebook is streamed in Ticker form on the upper right portion of other users screens. Haven’t been able to confirm yet if this is only limited to Friends etc or goes beyond this. However to be honest, there is a difference between simply sharing the content you post to broadcasting your every activity streaming in real time.
After searching about on Facebook Help and Forums have been unable to find or figure out any way of disabling this function. But what I did come across were a number of others with the same issue in this question stream to which I added the below response.
“Agree fully with the posts/questions above and will stop using FB until control to disable this ticker tracking function is made available. Will also raise this issue to the Canadian Privacy Commission as this is certainly a violation of our Privacy if it cannot be disabled. Asking people to unsubscribe is not a satisfactory or practical solution. Additionally it should be an Opt In so people know they are agreeing to this broadcast/tracking of all activities. But right now there isn’t even an Opt Out which would be a great start.”
As mentioned in question stream linked to above it seems the only option currently available is for the FB user to ask each of their friends to go into function and unsubscribe from their Ticker. Of course this is not a practical, satisfactory or infallible method of dealing with this although I have already seen some of these requests popping up. Here is another supporting opinion published by Ben Parr on Mashable.
So until I hear back that Facebook has rectified this glaring invasion of privacy issue, no other Facebook actions than posting my articles on wall will be done. Perhaps this will be the issue that allows me to end my always uncomfortable relationship with this social network. Perhaps it will also give momentum to the upcoming Kill Facebook initiative scheduled for November 5th.
The question on this invasion of privacy and how to disable is on Facebook Help Forum and we all await Facebook’s reply.
The Social CMO