Facebook posted the below notice on my Facebook page this morning…

This is the kind of thing that gets Facebook into trouble. They try to inform their users about important concerns that have legal implications by way of cutsy little one-liners. I’m not of the camp that feels entitled to Facebook in a Burger King-esque, “have it your way” kind of sense. I understand that I am using a free service owned by a private company and that I have agreed to certain concessions (i.e. ads based on my profile), I don’t feel particularly violated by anything that Facebook has done (thus far), but this overly subtle approach is what most people object to.

“Ever wonder how Facebook makes money?” Uh, not really. But if the notice said, “Ever wonder how Facebook shares your information with advertisers?” I bet many more people would want to “Get the details.” Even the “details” page is quite vague, glossing over the segment about sharing the user’s information with the statement, “The right people see the ad.” This kind of presumptive simplicity would never go over in a court of law or a televised debate, and I think that enough people are going to feel patronized by this approach that it is only going to add fuel to the fire in the Facebook privacy debate. It’s akin to the government telling U.S. citizens, “We’ll only tap the terrorists phones.”

Instead of feeding the public this marketing spin complete with adorable clip art, they should have just linked the “Get the details” link to this page and been done with it.