I agree they way the did it was wrong. My friends don’t need to know where I have been or what I have done but that data has been collected long before it has been made public and not just by facebook. At this point I just have come to grips that corporate America knows I buy large amounts of glue to sniff… I can’t help it.

-Kevin

Here’s what’s at issue for me…

I’m willing to let a company use data they collect about my behavior to target content and advertising to me. That should create a better user experience for me, and doesn’t expose my individual behaviors to other individuals or organizations.

I’m also willing to let a company use my data in aggregate, e.g., to attract advertisers who want to target a particular demographic. Again, it should create a better user experience for me, and allow the company to make more money, without exposing my individual behaviors or preferences to others.

But the assumption that I want to allow individuals I know to automatically know what I’m buying, what I’m reading, what I’m listening to, etc., is beyond ludicrous. I don’t care if Facebook, or even their partners, know that I’m checking out the competition’s products, or buying porn, or Richard Simmons workout videos, or Danielle Steel novels or whatever. That doesn’t mean that I want to put that on public display to all my friends.

You are right the question becomes do you want admission? Right now a lot of people do, and even more have to. It is a choice people have to make, where do you draw the line. But as more and more of our media, content, and connections are centered around online the more we are going to have to give up.

An interesting little aside to this in my mind is… This is one of the issues behind getting true aggregation services to manage ones systems. These companies lose out at having and controlling this data.