Oh, so that’s why Facebook Beacon is so evil
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Logged into Facebook (yeah, I finally started an account a couple of months back to watch the Engadget stuff on there) and saw this. Kind of a duh moment because I followed the whole Beacon controversy and all, but I’ve never used Facebook enough to notice how much of a completely seamless, fantastically engineered, and revolting invasion of privacy Beacon is. I also didn’t realize they’re referring to these Beacon snippets as “stories,” which is a really finessed way of phrasing the reality of the “feature”: information about my personal life that I never explicitly gave you or your partners permission to share or syndicate.
Oh yeah, and Merry Christmas!
I'm an editor and technology critic in the midst of founding a new web startup:


[...] first was from Ryan Block, of Engadget, titled “Oh, so that’s why Facebook Beacon is so evil” where he was venting a little frustration at what he finally actualy “saw” why [...]
Thank God it was I am Legend and not something like “Ryan Block is going to see Enchanted for the fifth time”
The potential for beacon to be really really bad is most certainly there though ;)