Facebook Secret Scam

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    An extremely interesting story unfolds right before our eyes, connected with the two largest Internet companies of our time: Google and Facebook.

    Edition of The Daily Beast has published the interesting details of how Facebook secretly hired one of their most famous PR-offices in Silicon Valley, for the reproduction of negative news about Google in general, and their privacy policy, in particular. Dan Lyons gives details.

    “Over the past few days, an interesting secret has been revealed here in Silicon Valley. There was a strong impression that someone had hired Burson-Marsteller, which is a top public relations firm, in order to find and escalate anti-Google publications in magazines, newspapers and other publications, forcing them to write about the fact that Google violates user privacy. Burson even tried to hire an influential blogger to publish a review article on the subject, promising to post in the Washington Post, Politico and The Huffington Post.

    The whole story fell apart when the blogger (Chris Soghoian) refused Burson-Marsteller and posted on the network a correspondence between him and the company representative who contacted him. The explosion happened when USA Today published a note accusing Burson of a “whispering campaign” (as the United States calls black PR) against Google, commissioned by an unnamed client. ”

    All correspondence is available for reading here .

    It is worth noting that all this hype was tied around one product - Social Circle, a Google service that allows GMail users to access information on the so-called. conditions of "secondary connections" - this is data about friends of friends. It was this service that was the epicenter of the hate attack.

    In their address to journalists and bloggers, representatives of the Burson PR company describe the product in an apocalyptic vein: “The American people should know how deeply Google got into their personal lives, cataloging and disseminating data every minute of every day, without your knowledge.”

    Sogoyan (Chris Soghoian - the blogger who was trying to hire Burson) considered that the company was trying to "make an elephant out of a fly", and decided to find out by whose order this order was being carried out by directly asking the name of the customer from Burson. There, his question, of course, was left unanswered.

    Finally, the story found its roots when a Facebook spokeswoman confirmed that the company hired Burson to do the dirty work. There are two reasons for this: 1. Facebook sincerely believes that Google violates generally accepted privacy standards; 2. Facebook “believes” that Google may “incorrectly use data received from Facebook users”. To paraphrase, Facebook considers themselves not only altruists, but also the defenders of the entire Internet.

    Meanwhile, Google did not react to this statement, noting only that it takes a little more time to draw conclusions. These are “no comments” in the style of Google.

    Looking at this situation in retrospect, several far-reaching conclusions can be made. Firstly, such aggressive behavior not only speaks of cowardice, it also hints at the lack of a brain in the Facebook marketing department. It is impossible to assume that they seriously hoped to remain “anonymous” - to whom, if not the representatives of the largest social networks, to know that any information, with due attention, very quickly becomes open.

    Secondly, now the whole Internet is aware that Facebook is afraid of Google and the products that they make in the latest company. And this is perhaps the most surprising, because Facebook definitely has nothing to fear, never. Super self-confidence is a Zuckerberg character trait that has spread throughout the company. Apparently, these waves do not reach the marketing department.

    Thirdly, now we know that Facebook can play a dirty game. Trusting them in the future will be even more difficult, not only for users, but also for business partners.

    And finally, the last - criticism of Google may even have been partially justified. But this no longer matters, because now all the stones will fly towards Palo Alto, not Mountain View (Google headquarters).

    The truth of this whole story is that Google is surely, even most likely, really violating the terms of use of Facebook, sucking out user data from there. But many, including your humble servant, agree that all user data, including social graphs, belong to users, not Facebook. And no matter what happens, the user is not involved in this process (I do not toss and turn at night at the thought that right now Google is analyzing my profile on the social network). The problem here is that Facebook considers this data to be its private property.

    You've lost a lot face today, Facebook © TechCrunch

    via Engadget

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