Senators Take on Facebook's 'Instant Personalization' Service's Fine Print

When it comes to financial regulatory reform, U.S. Senator Charles Schumer may be caught between a rock and a hard place. But when it comes to Facebook reform, the New Yorker finds himself spearheading a movement that, if successful, would enhance the transparency of the social networking site's data-sharing practices.

According to a press release from Schumer's office, the Senator has written to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), asking the Commission to "examine the privacy disclosures of social-networking sites to ensure they are not misleading or fail to fully disclose the extent to which they share information." The move comes less than a week after Facebook unveiled its new "Instant Personalization" service, which automatically shares user data with third-party partner sites.

Under the service's current structure, a user would have to go through a multi-step process of "opting out" of Facebook's data-sharing program and would have to visit each site individually to do so. Schumer is asking that Facebook make the service "opt-in," and that it better clarify the ways in which it works. As the Washington Post reports, Senators Al Franken and Michael Bennet have also signed on to Schumer's crusade, and issued a statement yesterday supporting Schumer's drive to rein in social networking sites, which they collectively call the "Wild Wild West of the Internet."

In response, Facebook public policy representative Andrew Noyes told CNET, "We were surprised by Senator Schumer's comments and look forward to sitting down with him and his staff to clarify." CNN published a letter that Facebook VP of Global Communications Elliot Schrage wrote to the senators. In it, Schrage argued that Facebook's "new products and features are designed to enhance personalization and promote social activity across the Internet while continuing to give users unprecedented control over what information they share, when they want to share it, and with whom."

Getting a governmental regulatory agency involved in Facebook's operations might seem like an extreme measure, but it may be for the best. Schumer's absolutely right when he says that social media sites "need to provide easy-to-understand disclosures to users on how information they submit is being shared." Ideally, we'd like to see Facebook return some autonomy to users by making its data-sharing systems opt-in affairs. If it doesn't, the least it could do is make the opt-out procedures more transparent. [From: CNET, CNN and WashingtonPost]

Tags: AlFranken, CharlesSchumer, facebook, ftc, government, InstantPersonalization, politics, privacy, Senate, SocialNetworking, top, web