Good measures, yet time and time again facebook has demonstrated its thirst to sell your info. Then "oopsied!" back to restraint.

Everything you put on/in there is still theirs. Someday they'll sell it all wholesale when everyone has moved on to the next social networking site a la myspace to facebook.

Don't trust this company. If you participate, don't be a fool: keep it ambiguous.

Then the evil companies will know what books you read, your favorite movies and that you like wine tasting and suddenly advertising will be so specific to your real interests and the world will collapse, most likely implode upon itself. What the fuck are you putting on Facebook, StillNon? It's fucking social media similar to Twitter not your goddamn email. When Google starts posting your private interests to everyone you have ever sent Gmail to then get back to me. Oh wait, Google already did that. For now, Facebook is it. However, I do dislike how Facebook connects your name with your private email account.

Which part of "Not Without My Express Permission" don't they get?

2:

It's fucking social media similar to Twitter not your goddamn email.

I know tons of people who practically rely on FB for all personal correspondence.

Further, no need to be histrionic about the world collapsing. The truth is that as more and more info is out there floating around about you, the more dots that can be connected, perhaps someday being used against you in some unknown and unpredictable way, or simply as a way to, yes, specifically target you. Do you like being a target of marketing? You do understand that marketing is the pseudo manipulation of your will to get you to buy something, right? Do you understand that your preferences are a gold mine because advertisers can make gold off of a more complete understanding of the psychology of who buys what, how, who it influences, how it spreads across your group, etc. etc? Better to manipulate you with, my pretty.

This isn't tinfoil hat stuff, this is where the industry is going.

@4 yeah, what's up with your weird fixation on peanut butter and bear cubs ...

@4 - So advertisers trying to get inside your head so they can better target advertising is evil? Isn't it a good thing that they are showing interest in not bombarding us with ads for crap we would have never bought anyways. In the past they were literally throwing a bunch of shit at the wall and seeing what stuck, here they're attempting to become more efficient at making only the right shit stick. The more effective a company's advertising is, the less it will cost them for the same amount of sales, saving them money and possibly passing the savings on to the consumer.

I can understand if you'd rather not put yourself in a position where data miners can get that data from you, but if that were the case, why are you using facebook? They're not some not for profit community service, they're a huge greedy corporation. Complaining that they're stealing your information is about as dumb as volunteering to post it in the first place.

6: I never said I use facebook.

I'm stating the facts about facebook's usage of the information provided to them by its users and I'm not one of them.

I am, however, an ad man and can tell you that your claim that the more you are targeted the more money you'll save is completely bogus.

For clarification:

there will still be contributing factors that make the target operation expensive, and the personal trade-off of voluntarily divorcing your anonymity as a consumer is not worth what you would theoretically save.

Well let's send out a bunch of junk mail instead. I have used the targeting function of Facebook for companies and it's pretty vanilla. I want male users in the Northwest who are over 30 and enjoy wine, etc. etc. It's all stuff you click on your profile for all to see and it means that the little ad in the right column is better suited to your likes and dislikes. The fact that you don't use Facebook StillNon shows just how out of touch with reality you are. Or hopefully you are lying about using Facebook because you consider them a threat. It's not a time waster like Twitter. It can actually make your life more efficient like email but in more and better ways. You are not required to put very much info in to use it. When Facebook was a closed and private network it was much less useful unless you're all about belonging to secret cliques. I got to think that some of these people that are so upset use Facebook as some sort of dating service or to hookup. Whatever, some people use mail order brides too but realize that Facebook is really about making your social and professional life more efficient.
Also Facebook has developed the most powerful online tool since Al Gore invented the Internet itself. Don't you think they should be allowed to profit in some way from what they have created considering in a couple of years people will be on to the next bext thing? The deal is they thought hiding everthing about you till you became a friend was a smart model and now see the error.
Sadly Facebook has put a lot of "ad men" such as yourself out of business.