The Facebook Beacon advertising system has breathed its last, finally coming to well-deserved death as a part of a yet-to-be-approved settlement in a class-action suit about the privacy rights of users.

Beacon, the glitzy advertising program launched by Facebook nearly two years ago, is no more. The result of a year-old class action suit is finally in, and the determination of the court is that Facebook failed to provide sufficient information and privacy controls to users with regard to Beacon, which shared information about users’ information on third-party partner sites in Facebook news feeds, according to a CNET story.

A $9.5 million settlement fund, to be used to set up an independent foundation to right part of the wrongs of Beacon, specifically to “fund projects and initiatives that promote the cause of online privacy, safety, and security.” Beacon has been a part of Facebook’s advertisement system that sends data from external websites to Facebook, ostensibly for the purpose of allowing targeted advertisements and allowing users to share their activities with their friends. The system was immediately seen as being rife with privacy flaws, and was sued by a number of persons and organizations, most notably MoveOn.org.

In a statement by Facebook, Bary Schnitt said, “”We look forward to the creation of the foundation and its work to educate Internet users on how best to control their privacy; engage in safe social-networking practices; and, generally, enjoy themselves more online by having knowledge that gives them a greater sense of control. We fully expect the foundation to team with other leading online-safety and privacy experts and organizations that have been working diligently in these fields.”

After the initial furor around Beacon, Facebook began to develop Connect, a somewhat similar system. However, Connect has been seen as more of a user-to-user system than was Beacon, and as such met with the approval of Facebook users. The privacy controls available to users of Connect are also much better, providing the fine information control that Beacon did not. In the long run, the basic Beacon idea was basically correct though the implementation was flawed, allowing Connect to take hold and serve much the same purpose.

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Entry was posted on Saturday, September 19th, 2009 at 6:15 pm under Internet, Social Media.

Read more entries by Michael W. Jones.
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