Adverting attention

Ah, Facebook. You used to have so much integrity.\nBack in the day, you helped me network only with my friends at elite and major state universities and your main gimmick was that people could identify potential new friends based on their tastes in music, movies and books.\nAnd now you have sold your soul to materialism. It’s no wonder that your new ad campaign, in which you put users’ third-party purchases in their News Feeds unless they actively change their settings, has incurred the wrath of users who don’t want to automatically be made pawns to capitalism. \nMoveOn.org spokesman Adam Green complained, “(Facebook’s) policy (on the new ads) remains opt-out instead of opt-in, their opt-outs remain well hidden, and if someone does jump through the hoops of opting out, it only applies to purchases made on one external Web site instead of all sites.”\nWelcome to capitalism, MoveOn.\nManeuvering the capitalistic market requires learning the art of “opting out,” or choosing not to engage with advertising. \nThe purpose of advertising is to hide from the consumers the idea that they could opt out. Advertising would not be as effective if it had an “opt-in” strategy, where it showed the consumer that it would be equally logical of them to engage or not engage in the consumption culture of the advertised product because people would rather save their energy if given the option. The purpose of advertising, then, is to try to override the appearance of that option.\nKudos to MoveOn for pointing out the subtlety of Facebook’s strategy, but it’s looking to the wrong group for change. Even if businesses make their advertising campaigns more transparent, they are still using the same strategy of trying to convert consumers.\nIt’s the consumer’s job, therefore, to always be working to gain a better understanding of when and how advertising is trying to grab them. Opting out doesn’t come as easily as it sounds because businesses actively try to prevent consumers from doing it.\nOf course, a major part of MoveOn’s argument is that Facebook putting business’ interests in selling their stuff ahead of its consumers’ interest in their privacy is not just an immoral but also a dangerous business move.\nIn other words, Facebook should instead have an opt-in policy for its users to socially network on its social-networking site.\nFacebook’s attempts to push the bar further when it comes to decreased privacy have continually been met with criticism. But given that users eventually come to accept these extensions, that criticism seems to be due more to the idea that privacy can be breached that far than the fact that it is.\nPushing those boundaries of privacy is yet another business move, but it’s one that thus far seems to be working well. \nFacebook is a business, and it won’t be adopting opt-in strategies so long as it keeps getting users to spend time on the site and increase its advertisers’ revenue. Instead, as users, we need to make ourselves aware of how to opt out.