Zuckerberg: I'm Sorry. Go Ahead And Turn Beacon Off*

Peter Kafka | December 5, 2007 1:38 PM

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has posted a long mea culpa on his site. Upshot: We/I screwed up, and I'm backing away from Beacon.

We and others have requested that Zuck make Beacon fully opt-in, and he's not quite doing that. But he's getting closer. You can now turn the thing off altogether - if you know where to look:
Last week we changed Beacon to be an opt-in system, and today we're releasing a privacy control to turn off Beacon completely. You can find it here. If you select that you don't want to share some Beacon actions or if you turn off Beacon, then Facebook won't store those actions even when partners send them to Facebook.
We don't think this makes Facebook's Beacon problem go away altogether, because Beacon still isn't truly an "opt-in" program. It's default mode is still "on", and you need to know that there's an off button -- and know where to find it -- to make it go away. But this should help douse the flames a bit.

On a side note, we get that Zuck sees himself as a Steve Jobs-like character. But titling his post "Thoughts On Beacon" -  a clear copy/homage of the Apple (AAPL) chief's Februrary memo on DRM - seems a bit much.

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11 Comments

Alex said:
I agree with stone's comments above. It is time to move aside Mark. You are sitting on a gold mine and you need professional operators to run it.
There has to be some collateral damage coming as well. Somebody has to take the bullet here to buy Mark some time. My guess is the guy they have from Amazon (Owen?). Why? Well because he should have had the balls to stand up to Mark and say "look asshole, there are laws out there protecting consumers. Do you think Amazon would NOT be doing this if could. Amazon reached critical mass back when you where in middle school a few years ago. Either you stop this or I will resign".
Nope he did not do that!!! But, may be he did and this is why he got demoted.

pwb said:
What Spinchange said.
Nate Westheimer said:
The Zuck-Jobs connection is mostly that their products are "opinionated." And when they are opinionated they can be wrong.
bones said:
Anyone watch the announcement of the Facebook API over the summer? Definitely Jobs mimicry, and horrible at that.
Peter Kafka said:
Andrew, Mark,
Really? You don't think he's completely trying to ape el Jobso? Eye of the beholder, I guess.
Mark said:
what was he supposed to title it, "Sorry about Beacon"?
"Beacon Sucks"?
or, "MicroSoft: Sorry, No Refunds"?
stone said:
This is the right thing to do but it shouldn't mean he keeps his job. Facebook investors need to protect the franchise. Mark is not experienced enough to run this company. Sorry, Mark.

Spinchange said:
Too little, to late. Just because you can turn off the display of data sent back to facebook doesn't mean data isn't still being sent back to them.

Don't any of these Beacon partners have TOS that prohibit them from sharing user data with 3rd parties without express permission? Just because Facebook isn't broadcasting it, doesn't mean that there isn't still a violation of privacy going on.

I hope others don't forget that facebook first totally misrepresented how Beacon even worked. For them to now expect users to simply trust that they 'ignore' what gets sent back is really insulting.

Andrew Parker said:
I think that Steve Jobs link is a bit of a stretch. I title blog posts as "thoughts on x" all the time... non Jobsian reference required.

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