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RE: Facebook 'Like' button draws privacy scrutiny

AlexKovnat 2nd Jun 2010

I think the matter of Facebook and privacy deserves some honest discussion.

We Americans are spoiled rotten. We take it for granted that we should have access to all the genuine benefits Facebook has to offer: being able to reconnect with people we knew 30 years ago in high school, or re-connect with people we knew back in ~1993 on long-defunct Usenet newsgroups, et cetera. We take it for granted the benefits FB offers in terms of being able to share your interests with kindred souls. And we take it for granted that all this should be FREE!

So how does FB support itself? By selling info to businesses which market mainly through the mail and through the internet. If you own a business, you might be willing to pay for information that would enable you to more carefully target E-mail and snailmail advertisements, so as to reduce wasting your efforts on those who are not likely to be interested in whatever it is you are selling. Selling ad space and selling profile information to businesses, is the only thing that keeps FB free instead of us having to pay a fee to subscribe.