Be careful what you Like

Remember how you thought it would be funny to Like the Facebook page of Charmin toilet paper? Thanks to a new Facebook tweak, now Charmin can post ads about t.p., AS YOU, in your friends’ news feeds. If Charmin chooses to, it can promote its “SitOrSquat” app that leads people to public restrooms, AS YOU. ZDNet contacted Facebook and got this response:

To help people find new Pages, events, and other interesting information, people may now see posts from a Page a friend likes. These posts will include the social context from your friends who like the Page and will respect all existing settings.

Even worse, it doesn’t look like there’s a way to disable this “feature.” Seems like Facebook is really playing up brand pages, as earlier this week it rolled out another “feature” that lets owners of Pages see who has clicked on posts. For example, if you were to head over to our Facebook Page and click on the “Hey, what was that?!?” post from yesterday, I would know who you are. Creepy, sure, but creepier still: imagine if Facebook decides to roll this out to the general public. Goodbye Facebook stalking, hello weirdos!

About the author

Marc Sanchez is the technical director and associate producer for Marketplace Tech Report where he is responsible for shaping the sound of the show.
ChromeJob's picture
ChromeJob - Jul 13, 2012

This is news? Friend-sponsored ads on Facebook were intro'ed a while ago. Or maybe I'm missing some subtle difference here?

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