Ohhh, Facebook. You keep giving me reasons to think about giving you up.

This week, it’s this article from Ad Age

the social network will not be honoring the do-not-track setting on web browsers. A Facebook spokesman said that’s “because currently there is no industry consensus.”

So, let me get this straight… people set a switch on their browser that says “do not track me” and Facebook decides that because there’s no agreement as to what that means, they can ignore it? Maybe a better approach would have been to say that all these people have intentionally set this flag, and even though we can’t all agree on what this means, we’ll honor what the users intentions are. But that’s not Facebook’s way. Time and again, they have proven that they’re not interested in what the users want (and take action to prevent Facebook from doing), they’re going to do whatever suits Facebook best and screw the users. 

it looks like IE10 and Firefox are set to “do not track” by default, which could be used to counter my above argument that people are setting it. Facebook could be the bigger entity here and go along with it, or they could just ignore it for those two browsers. 

The best part, though, when I search Google for “Facebook do not track,” the fourth hit is a note from Facebook from almost 3 years ago. From that article:

If you want to be anonymous online, three of the four major Internet browsers now let you send a “Do Not Track” signal. We respect that signal and won’t track your surfing, but too many companies don’t respect “Do Not Track,” including the largest online — Google. 

Google’s Chrome is the only major browser not to include an adequate “Do Not Track” setting and Google’s web sites don’t respect your “Do Not Track” signals.

Google’s doing the same thing, but at least they didn’t flip-flop on the issue to whatever’s most convenient for them. 

Guess it’s time for another privacy lockdown on Facebook.