Facebook’s Beacon tracked purchases and broadcast them without consent

Evidence

In 2007 Facebook launched Beacon, touting it as “a new way to socially distribute information.” Beacon enabled Facebook advertisers to track users across the internet, disclosing users’ purchases to their personal networks without permission. Most people were outraged by the company’s audacity, both in tracking them online and in usurping their ability to control the disclosure of their own facts. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg shut the program down under duress, but by 2010 he declared that privacy was no longer a social norm and then congratulated himself for relaxing the company’s “privacy policies” to reflect this self-interested assertion of a new social condition. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 148

Categorization

• XREF: Well-known historical episode for the surveillance capitalism narrative; connects to the framing that early scandals were transition failures rather than design. — connects to: Early Facebook Beacon quietly shared user activity without consent until protests forced opt-in. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 290

Broader Connections

• Early Facebook Beacon quietly shared user activity without consent until protests forced opt-in. #corroborates (0.98) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 290