{"id":231,"date":"2011-01-26T10:32:49","date_gmt":"2011-01-26T15:32:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gadflyonline.com\/wpblog\/?p=231"},"modified":"2012-07-15T19:57:38","modified_gmt":"2012-07-15T23:57:38","slug":"true-life-my-life-is-a-facebook-advertisement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/true-life-my-life-is-a-facebook-advertisement\/","title":{"rendered":"True Life: My Life is a Facebook Advertisement"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>By: CARRIE FILIPETTI<\/p>\n

<\/a>Am I the only one who remembers the “No ads, it has to be cool” line in “The Social Network”?<\/p>\n

Apparently, facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg thinks that only applies to conventional ads–or his $6.9 billion<\/a> has him singing a different tune. What is cool, he says, is the kind of marketing where,\u00a0unbeknownst to\u00a0(and unauthorized by) you, major corporations have the option of paying facebook to harvest your personal profile pictures and comments for potential new ads.<\/p>\n

At midnight on January 25th, Facebook announced the creation of “Sponsored Stories,” a program that has already gone into effect<\/a> (man, they work fast). According to this new program, any time you use facebook check-ins, “like” a corporation, use an application, or do any of the thousands of things facebook users do on a daily basis, your friends may see a new ad emblazoned with your image, telling them to BUYBUYBUY. Now, facebook developers, in their introductory video<\/a> to “Sponsored Stories,” argue that this isn’t a program “that’s saying you should buy this thing…it’s your friends saying look I did this, and I want to tell you about it.” The obvious logical dilemma, of course, is that you aren’t actually choosing to to tell them about it — Starbucks is paying facebook to do that for you. Just because I’m in a Starbucks doesn’t mean I agree to being an unpaid corporate promoter.<\/p>\n

On a certain level, there is not much expectation of privacy one can reasonably have on the site, which has faced legal battles in the past concerning the level of personal information it voluntarily shares with corporations and ad agencies<\/a>. \u00a0But, on another level, there is something ominous about a program that takes your every day decisions — like going to Dunkin’ Donuts \u00a0— and turns them into paid advertisements. Well, at least facebook is paid. All you get is the — joy? satisfaction? — of knowing that your name, image, and thoughts are all the property of the Mega-Corporation #1; and that facebook is the one reaping the benefits.<\/p>\n

The Age of the Corporations has begun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Facebook’s new “Sponsored Stories” program pays off for everyone but you. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":235,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,214],"tags":[61,58,60,59],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3066,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231\/revisions\/3066"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}