Re:Facebook claims it does not track users, but files patent...
by arcs on Sunday October 02, 2011 @04:10PM
(#3063873)
This feels like blatant sensationalism to me.
This particular patent describes the process for 3rd party sites to tell Facebook about something the user did (new Open Graph API, anyone?), which subsequently can be shown as an ad to the user's friends, i.e. "Your friend blah has bought something on This Service, do you want to do so too?" (some peer context for ads, which facebook already tries to do for things like fanning pages).
This is quite different from the meaning implied by this post, which the first 2 quotes were addressing, that Facebook tracks and correlates browsing patterns of users across the internet without their consent.
This particular patent describes the process for 3rd party sites to tell Facebook about something the user did (new Open Graph API, anyone?), which subsequently can be shown as an ad to the user's friends, i.e. "Your friend blah has bought something on This Service, do you want to do so too?" (some peer context for ads, which facebook already tries to do for things like fanning pages).
This is quite different from the meaning implied by this post, which the first 2 quotes were addressing, that Facebook tracks and correlates browsing patterns of users across the internet without their consent.