In 2010, security expert Bruce Scheiner gave a speech about online privacy in which he said, “Don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re Facebook’s customer, you’re not – you’re the product. Its customers are the advertisers.”
This has been popularly rephrased as, “If you aren’t paying for the product or service, you are the commodity being sold.”
Facebook doesn’t care about its users’ privacy, plain and simple. They don’t really care about its users any more than they are required to in order to keep the site running so people can post dumb quotes on their walls, play FarmVille, and (most importantly) buy Facebook Credits and click on advertisements.
In what rational people will see as “a bad move” and Facebook’s target demographic won’t even notice, Starbucks, Levi, Budweiser, and other brands can now use Facebook users’ “Likes” and check-ins as advertising. These check-ins and Likes can take the user’s profile picture and any check-in text and create a branded advertisement that will be seen by the user’s friends. So just bear in mind as sipping your overpriced 31-ounce Tazo Tea, that if you checked in at Starbucks or used their iPhone app to order, you may have just become an unpaid spokesperson for a billion-dollar company. Can you opt out? No. Will you be compensated for your endorsement? No.
Just remember. Facebook is free of charge. They make their money by selling users’ personal information and publishing advertisements.