Case Study Critque

Facebook ads have become the new trend in online marketing and the ads on these social networks continue to challenge social norms about privacy and personal data. Privacy is one of the biggest issues amongst others surrounding advertising on Facebook and all concerns have reasoning behind them. Personal information from customers, viewers or even companies advertising on Facebook is available for anyone to see and because of such an open door this has created quite a stir.

Beacon was a system created to post on the news feeds of logged-in Facebook users when that person made a purchase on another website or made a request on another website. This system allowed unlimited access to users. People had a choice to not use Beacon but the privacy issue with Beacon needed to be considered immediately because of complaints and because customers were having problems. This system was then changed because of the major issues but the damage was done as Facebook’s strategy of using the people on these websites activities to target ads could not work without the Beacon system in action.

Facebook ads continued to do well but in each new addition to these ads they do not consider privacy and the impact of having no privacy around this medium of advertising. In terms of other means of advertising like Television ads and newspaper ads, there is no privacy violated compared to how it is on Facebook when users link to an ad or purchase online. Facebook ads do not have the credibility that other mediums of advertising would have and therefore in my opinion advertising through Facebook is not the way forward. The invasion of personal information is a great privacy issue as nothing is kept hidden in terms of what people have to say and what they show on these ads. People do not understand the seriousness of these ads and the information that could actually lead to their accounts being hacked and used by people who have found their information freely from a Facebook.

Q2

Facebook...