The CBC Links up with the Facebook
The CBC announced a partnership with Facebook this morning. The deal has the CBC promoting a Facebook group called 'the Great Canadian Wish List.'
The site will encourage people to submit their ideas and dreams for the country. Interesting ideas will be handpicked and featured on TV and radio. At last check the group has 783 members. If you don't have a Facebook account you can keep track of developments on this blog.
What surprises me about this announcement is that it comes as concerns about privacy on Facebook mount. A few days ago Facebook announced a new privacy policy Here's a few snippets (Note these are from the old policy):
When you enter Facebook, we collect your browser type and IP address. This information is gathered for all Facebook visitors... Facebook may also collect information about you from other sources, such as newspapers, blogs, instant messaging services, and other users of the Facebook service through the operation of the service (e.g., photo tags) in order to provide you with more useful information and a more personalized experience.
On the same day that the privacy policy was released, Facebook also launched a new set of developer tools which allows third parties to make use of Facebook personal data on other sites (such as this). Wired has an article on that here.
If you have concerns about your privacy on Facebook you may want to check out this video (via strombo.com). I haven't verified the content of that video, so I cannot vouch for its accuracy, but if it's true it does raise some concerns.
Maybe someone should post a idea to the Great Canadian Wish List to tighten up Facebook's privacy policy.
Comments
You don't really need or want that lifestyle, it might hurt y'all slowly more.......Just tell him you
don't wanna repeat something your not too proud of z7uas.
Posted by: bilamytat | October 30, 2007 03:32 PM
It's easy to interpret Facebook's privacy policy, actually. If you use your real name as they insist, you effectively have no privacy on Facebook.
It's that simple and straightforward.
Posted by: Joe Privacy | July 3, 2007 11:58 AM
Simple. If you want to protect your privacy, don't join. If you don't care, fly at it.
The Great Canadian Wish List is extremely interesting & sometimes hilarious. (Although, how abortion is considered an exclusive Canadian topic, I'm not sure.)
There was one wish titled:
Stop The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos on CBC Television.
It only had 1 member & no supporters.
http://www.facebook.com/sgroup/subgroup.php?oid=2392827649&sub_oid=2448416856
Posted by: Jenuine | June 4, 2007 03:43 AM
Hi Paul,
We at Facebook are very excited about the CBC partnership. The group is approaching 2000 members now and we look forward to having it grow further in the coming days and weeks.
With regard to the privacy policy, the segment you quote isn't new at all -- it's been there for the better part of two years and is necessary to describe some core operations of the service (like photo tagging) that millions of users love. We've been committed from the beginning to describing both what we do and don't do with data, and with giving people extensive controls over who sees their data. The statement of principles we articulate to give people our thoughts about privacy didn't change either. Anyone has been able to see those two key guiding principles since February 2006 at the top of our pages at www.facebook.com/policy.php.
One new thing that we did add in the last month is our formal certification that we meet the requirements of EU privacy law, after which Canadian privacy law is substantially modeled.
We've seen a few strange alarmist posts come up now and again, usually based on strange interpretations of our policy or illogical connections (like in the video you link to). That's concerning to us because we have been leading the way among online sites in giving people control over their information.
Overall, we're committed to giving users choice about how much data they share with us and everyone else, and happy to answer any questions about our privacy policy at privacy@facebook.com.
--
Chris Kelly
Chief Privacy Officer
Facebook
Posted by: Chris Kelly | May 29, 2007 02:17 AM
Though in a previous post (the facebook vs myspace post) I vowed I would never get facebook, I actually did bow to pressure and get an account. I lasted for a month (which is better than how long I lasted on myspace)...though I won't be joining the group, I do think it is a great idea for people who are on facebook, as it is very interactive, and would be great for sharing ideas.
Posted by: faith | May 28, 2007 09:39 PM