Near the end of last year, Facebook encountered some backlash over privacy issues. 
When Facebook members bought a book, movie, or gift online the specifics of the purchase were
shared with all their friends through a news feed. This was in line with other changes Facebook has been making but this featured seemed to entirely benefit advertisers and place their interests before the basic privacy rights of Internet users.
Here are some comments from Facebook members on the issue:
Christmas…When my wife logged onto Facebook, there was an entry in her news feed
that I had bought a ring from Overstock. It had a link to the ring and everything.
Christmas ruined."
"I saw my girlfriend bought an item i had been saying i wanted…so now part
of my christmas gift has been ruined. Facebook is ruining christmas!"
"Facebook, are you kidding me? This is way out of bounds for a program I
never opted into."
On December 5, 2007 Mark Zuckerberg announced a big switch from having to opt-out of new features to having to choose to opt-in. A new permanent opt out feature was also announced.
Facebook's new privacy policy states: "No stories will be published without users proactively consenting.
If a user does nothing with the initial notification on Facebook, it will hide after some duration without a story being published. When a user takes a future action on a Beacon site, it will reappear and display all the potential stories along with the opportunity to click "OK" to publish or click "remove" to not publish."
It will be interesting to see how other social networking sites learn from Facebook.
