Initially, Facebook was rather chilly to the accusations, saying MoveOn "misrepresented" how Beacon worked. But they’ve warmed up since national coverage and outrage ballooned over the last week.

A Facebook spokesperson has now said that the company is committed to "evolving" Beacon so that uses have more control over actions shared from participating sites. This control was originally planned for Beacon before launch, allowing users to permanently opt out of the program instead of the piecemeal version that upset users.

MoveOn now says the new incarnation of Beacon needs to satisfactorily answer two questions in order for them to call off the dogs:

1)    Is it still possible for private transactions made on other websites to be displayed publicly on Facebook without the Facebook user’s explicit opted-in permission? 
2)    Did Facebook add a way for users to permanently say no to Beacon, so users can have peace of mind that their private activity off Facebook will never be made displayed publicly on Facebook?

The answers they’re looking for, if you haven’t guessed, are ‘no’ to the first and ‘yes’ to the second. Otherwise, says the organization, Facebook is putting "the wish lists of corporate advertisers ahead of the basic privacy rights of Internet users."  

Privacy Backlash Hits Social Networking

One-time online darlings in social networking have begun to feel the dizzying dehydration of the morning after a really great party. Pushback from several quarters may leave the typical past college age person questioning the sanity of being on such sites.

Facebook has been in a running battle recently with activist group MoveOn.org over use of the Facebook Beacon. That feature of Facebook posts a note to one’s online profile whenever the individual makes an online purchase at a merchant participating in Beacon.

MoveOn accused Facebook of originally planning to permit people to permanently opt-out of Beacon, but removed that function at the last minute.

“Facebook should explain why they chose at the last minute to put the wish lists of corporate advertisers ahead of the privacy interests of their users,” said MoveOn’s Adam Green.

If it isn’t a cadre of advertisers looking over one’s shoulder in social networking, it’s people who a person would rather forget existed. Cory Doctorow said at Information Week that social networking sites have “built-in self-destructs”:

For every long-lost chum who reaches out to me on Facebook, there’s a guy who beat me up on a weekly basis through the whole seventh grade but now wants to be my buddy; or the crazy person who was fun in college but is now kind of sad; or the creepy ex-co-worker who I’d cross the street to avoid but who now wants to know, “Am I your friend?” yes or no, this instant, please.

When that happens enough times, someone may just decide it’s time to bail out on the social network; either to build a new profile on a different site, or simply ditch it altogether.

The world of work poses another challenge for the post-college social networker. American human resources workers will cheerfully dredge up a job applicant’s youthful hijinks from such sites and use it to exclude him or her from the hiring process.

This is hypocrisy distilled down to its most potent essence. The hiring person, and probably her boss and the boss’s boss, etc, wouldn’t be able to withstand such scrutiny either in the 21st century, yet they will use it against those who didn’t do anything worse than they did.

Though there’s no hope of US businesses being prevented from doing this, it could change in the UK. The Guardian reported these searches into social networking profiles, or even a cursory query at Google, could be in violation of data protection laws.

However, the legality is not clear, leaving it up to the individual to ensure the proper privacy settings have been made to keep their personal lives private, or at least limited to trusted friends. It might be easier to delete a profile entirely.

We have noted before that the original Facebook model, limiting access to registrants with a dot-edu email address, could be replicated easily by another site. With the right feature set and ease of use in place, such a site could become what Facebook used to be: relatively private and free from heavy corporate influence.

Privacy concerns could provide fertile ground for such a site to grow.

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From the webpage’s description:

 Facebook Beacon actions include purchasing a product, signing up for a service, adding an item to a wish list, and more. When a user performs the action, they will be alerted that your website is sending a story to their profile…

From the other side of the marketing tunnel, that means if you’re a friend of Sally’s, or in Sally’s network, you’ll be alerted when Sally buys movie tickets or, as in some cases, Christmas gifts.

Two early responses from Facebook members, courtesy of MoveOn.org:

"Oh my gosh, my cousins entire christmas shopping list this week was displayed on the feed. thats so messed up. This has gotta stop!" — Tasha Valdez from Michigan

"I saw my gf bought an item i had been saying i wanted… so now part of my christmas gift has been ruined. Facebook is ruining christmas!" — Matthew Helfgott from New York

Though Facebook has qualified the Beacon program as one that grants Facebookers the ability to "opt out" of having their purchases reported, MoveOn says users have to opt out of each site’s promotional reports.

One member complained that when he bought a movie ticket on Fandango, that information was subsequently published via the News Feed, an occurrence he says happened without permission and was a violation of his privacy.

It’s the privacy concerns – more so than the early peek at Christmas presents – that MoveOn is fretting over. In response, the organization has set up a Facebook group as the one home of an online petition, and is launching an ad campaign with the slogan, "Stop Invading My Privacy. "

The ad asks the harrowing question: "Have you noticed that what you do on other sites is now in your News Feed?"

The petition also calls for a stop to the program: "Facebook must respect my privacy. They should not tell my friends what I buy on other sites—or let companies use my name to endorse their products—without my explicit permission."

Facebook member Allie Scheerer comments on the petition group page: "This is incredibly upsetting to hear. I feel like I have big brother watching over my shoulder. I never thought I’d have a private company doing this; before I had always worried about government. This is not okay."

Facebook has raised privacy concerns on many fronts recently as the company expands its marketing efforts in an attempt to live up to some rather steep valuations. Most recently, officials from within the British government have complained Facebook knows too much about its users.

Facebook could not be reached for comment in time for publication.

Long after other major networks have relented and permitted the use of their debate videos, Fox News wants all the Republicans running for the Oval Office to stop using theirs.

It wasn’t always this way. Go back a week, where Talking Points Memo noted who received a cease and desist letter on video usage, and who didn’t. John McCain’s campaign got the copyright infringement letter; to McCain’s credit, his campaign declined that request.

Rudy Giuliani, a long-time friend of Fox executive Roger Ailes, had plenty of Fox material on his website. It didn’t seem like his campaign suffered from similar attention from Ailes’ legal people.

After that little conflict became more widely known, Fox told all of the Republicans not to use its videos. That garnered a response from MoveOn.org, reprising efforts in April of this year to have networks release Democratic debate videos for others to use.

“It is time that the presidential candidates from both parties stand with Senator McCain and defend his right to use this clip to advance his presidential campaign,” Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig said on his blog.

“Not because it is “fair use” (whether or not it is), but because presidential debates are precisely the sort of things that ought to be free of the insanely complex regulation of speech we call copyright law.”

“One way to solve this is for all the candidates to pledge that they will not appear on any network’s debate unless that network frees the footage for all candidates and citizens,” Jeff Jarvis said at PrezVid.com. “It is, after all, our election.”

Prominent conservative voices like RedState.com blogger Eric Erickson and former Republican FEC Chair Brad Smith have also challenged Fox over the use of debate videos.

Though Fox has partially pulled itself away from a perceived conflict of interest by extending its demands to all Republican candidates, their stance runs counter to their motto of “We Report. You Decide.” It looks like people have decided they want fair use of debate video.

Readers may recognize the name ‘Lance Dutson’ from our coverage of his battles against an ad agency over its business with the state of Maine (see here and here.)

Dutson emerged in the news again, this time as an advocate for Maine’s Republican Senator Susan Collins. Robert Cox, head of the Media Bloggers Association, wrote in The Examiner of Google rejecting Dutson’s ads about MoveOn.org:

The banned advertisements said, “Susan Collins is MoveOn’s primary target. Learn how you can help” and “Help Susan Collins stand up to the MoveOn.org money machine.” The ads linked to Collins’ campaign Web site with a headline reading “MoveOn.org has made Susan Collins their #1 target.” The Collins Web site claims that MoveOn has contributed $250,000 to her likely Democratic opponent and has run nine ads against her costing nearly $1 million. The Web site also displays MoveOn.org’s controversial “General Betray Us” ad.

An expert on intellectual property disputes cited by Cox sided with Google’s rejection of the ads, but called the rejection, "troubling." Google policy counsel Pablo Chavez said on the company’s always interesting Public Policy blog the company did not reject the ads on political grounds:

Some time ago, MoveOn.org submitted a request to Google that its trademark not be used in any ads, and as a result our advertiser support team offered instructions on how Senator Collins’ campaign could edit and resubmit its ad.

Any company or organization — regardless of political affiliation — could do what MoveOn did and thereby prevent advertisers from running ads that include their trademarks in ad texts. And that’s very important. The ad in question could have said that MoveOn.org was great, or even just so-so, and our policy would have resulted in the same outcome; Google would have asked the advertiser to drop the trademarked phrase.

Chavez also dismissed Cox’s claim of the company running other trademarks in ads without a problem. "If ads are running on Google that include trademark terms in their text, either the trademark owner has not submitted a complaint, or the advertiser has been authorized to use the trademark," he said.

Cox posted a response on Google’s Public Policy blog, exhorting the company to change its policy. "There is no basis in trademark law to support MoveOn’s claim," said Cox.

As noted by Jason Lee Miller and numerous others, the Department of Justice gave a thumbs-up to prioritization of Internet traffic. If you want the best chance of consistently delivering content to your visitors, you’re going to have to pay.

So much has been said about net neutrality that it seemed maintaining a status quo that has helped businesses boom (and send more taxes to Washington) would be easy to accomplish. It didn’t happen that way.

CNet writer Declan McCullagh summed up ten reasons (really nine, he blames the Bush Administration twice) why net neutrality fell harder than a sack of wet cement. In his final reason, McCullagh calls vociferous net neutrality advocate MoveOn out for indirectly carrying the day for the other side:

Most technology debates in Congress aren’t especially partisan: Both Democrats and Republicans fall over each other to enact unconstitutional restrictions on free speech when it comes to laws like the Communications Decency Act. The R&D tax credit is another. But somehow along the way, perhaps because Internet companies allied themselves so closely with MoveOn.org (hardly a non-partisan group), it became a partisan issue. And that led to the usual partisan gridlock.

McCullagh also cited a conversation with Heritage Foundation senior research fellow James Gattuso, who thought the for-profit members backing net neutrality became a little frightened at the partisanship, and worse, being affiliated with the stridency of the “hard left”:

“Some of the rhetoric got a bit out of control on the left. They started talking about the evils of pricing and the evils of price discrimination in markets. Anyone in the corporate side had to have second thoughts about that.”

We contacted MoveOn for comments about these views, but the organization, which has been so active in getting the net neutrality message out, has not responded to that request. This seems like the wrong time to go silent.

MoveOn Blasts MySpace Over Censorship

What happened to the Common Cause ad against media consolidation? Is MySpace planning to erect a toll road to its profiles for widget makers? Isn’t MySpace’s stance against ads in profiles a little disingenuous considering that Cingular is Tom Anderson’s number one friend?

MoveOn has some issues with MySpace, and aired them at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York. Pariser was scheduled to participate in a panel with MySpace spokesman Jeff Berman on user-generated content.

MySpace and MoveOn are politically polar opposites. MySpace’s owner, News Corp head Rupert Murdoch, lusts after the Wall Street Journal for its conservative journalism. MoveOn is vastly more comfortable with the likes of Al Gore and similar-minded people.

MoveOn wants to challenge MySpace over its community, namely the lack of say the community has over the changes MySpace makes, particularly when it comes to user-generated content. Censorship concerns have led to this criticism of MySpace, and MoveOn has launched an Internet User Rights initiative to combat it.

Several examples were cited by MoveOn in a statement about their complaints. They gave the Common Cause ad from January, a Rupert Murdoch parody from April, and a profile for a band called Kids On TV as examples of content censored by MySpace.

The arguments don’t seem to hold up well. Anyone who is on MySpace can also choose to leave MySpace. If a band feels it is being treated unfairly by the site, they can take down their content, put it up on a new site, and leave a link at MySpace for fans to follow.

Fox Interactive Media gets to make the rules for MySpace. Policies that alienate their users are unfortunate, but options do exist elsewhere. If enough users vote with their keyboards and head to Bebo or wherever, MySpace will either get the message and change an unpopular policy, or just watch those users leave.

During a House committee vote on the Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act, Republicans and Democrats made their decisions one by one until the measure was passed 20-13 (with both parties in the “yes” column).

But wait, says MoveOn, that’s 33 votes. There were 34 representatives in on that committee meeting (out of 40).

Massachusetts Democrat Bill Delahunt voted “present,” they learned when reviewing the roll. Present? He must have dozed off and dreamed that he was back in school.

“The free and open Internet was under seige, and your representative in Congress boldly…abstained,” wrote MoveOn’s Eli Pariser in an email.

The victory in the House Judiciary Committee was the first solid victory for SaveTheInternet.com’s initiative that includes MoveOn and a wide range of organizations on the political spectrum.

“Our pressure achieved a strong bipartisan victory-6 Republicans joined 14 Democrats for a bipartisan 20-13 vote. But it was a nail-biter until the very end, and every representative could have been the deciding vote,” said Pariser.

“Of course, to be the deciding vote, members of Congress have to decide.”

MoveOn subsequently posted all of Delahunt’s contact information on their website so constituents could aid him in his decision-making process. Funny, Delahunt doesn’t mention his lack of opinion on the House minutes posted on his website.

Conservative rightist group the Christian Coalition joined in with MoveOn’s cause by publicly announcing the joint effort to preserve Net Neutrality, which Republicans have typically been opposed to. The two organizations have temporarily put aside their differences to raise money for a $70,000 full page advertisement in the New York Times.

“We never thought we’d see the day, but it’s come: we’re working together with the Christian Coalition,” reads MoveOn’s website.

The ad will read, “When it comes to protecting the Internet, the Christian Coalition and MoveOn respectfully agree.”

Delahunt will have until June to make his decision, when the act reaches the House floor.

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Agreeing To Disagree About Goodmail

Has the imminent debut of Goodmail for AOL and Yahoo email users given you cause for concern? How will you address the possible high cost of mass mailing to your opt-in recipients? Share your strategy at WebProWorld.

RightMarch and MoveOn hold diametrically opposite positions in the political spectrum. To bring these two rival political action committees to a common ground usually requires a staggeringly horrifying event taking place, like the launch of New Coke.

This time, it’s the proposed fees for delivering bulk email to opt-in recipients that MoveOn and RightMarch find difficult to swallow. Computerworld reported how a new coalition sponsored by the Electronic Frontier Foundation will bring the two together along with other interested groups.

This coalition opposes the prospect of being forced to pay for unhindered delivery of its messages to subscribers. The article noted how senders in the program would have to pay one-quarter of a cent to one cent in exchange for “preferential treatment” of their messages.

The article cited comments from an EFF officer on the issue:

Billionaire George Soros backs MoveOn, while RightMarch president William Green noted in the report how how RightMarch spends “thousands of dollars a month on e-mail delivery services,” so neither group is exactly hurting for money.

Both AOL and Yahoo could launch Goodmail’s CertifiedEmail service in the spring. The article quoted AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham in reporting AOL will begin using CertifiedEmail in 30 days. Yahoo’s launch would come after that, according to Goodmail.

Jason Lee Miller covered the AOL-Goodmail issue in early February; you can read about that here.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

If you work in PR, marketing or media, you can’t afford to ignore the impact of MoveOn and other online activists — regardless of your political views. The work these groups are doing has made many traditional consensus-building tactics irrelevant.

Activists’ mighty tools can be turned on a dime against a corporation whose actions or products are seen as reprehensible. Yet there is not a single politician or corporation ready to mobilize with equal force.

Examining the impact of MoveOn’s presidential straw poll and other actions, it appears that guerilla marketing masters from John the Baptist to Edward Bernays to P.T. Barnum had nothing on today’s online activists.

With just four paid staff members and an operating budget of $330,000, MoveOn uses e-mail and easy-to-navigate Web pages to spring members into action. They encourage members to sign online petitions; call, write letters and send e-mail to media outlets, elected and corporate officials; donate money to causes and state their opinions in forums throughout the Internet.

In the MoveOne primary, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, with 44 percent of the vote, led the pack of nine Democratic presidential candidates who have officially entered the Democratic primary race. Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich came in second, with 24 percent, followed by Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, with 16 percent.

Since none of the candidates won a clear majority, MoveOn has not endorsed anyone. Instead, it says it will encourage its members to make contributions to and volunteer for the candidates of their choice.

Deploying traditional PR tools at lightening speed Once a MoveOn member registers and gives his or her mailing address and e-mail address, MoveOn software can instantly provide a member with a list of their Congressmen, Senators, local representatives and media outlets.

MoveOn campaigns use some traditional PR tools, deploying them with great dispatch. Petitions are hand-delivered to each Congressional member prior to a vote. Bumper stickers are printed and distributed. Banner ads for campaigns are run on Yahoo and made available for download to hundreds of other Web sites. Press releases are issued and speeches are made.

MoveOn and other activists provide suggested messages for members to personalize and, with one click, send to many politicians, organizations and media. They also promote subscriptions to recommended magazines and newsletters, and provide readers for interviews, viewers for TV and radio shows and visitors to Web sites.

When MoveOn identifies a political issue and asks its members to take action, a tsunami is let loose. The MoveOn political action committee has raised $6.5 million for like-minded candidates and has hopes of doubling that amount in this election cycle. MoveOn generated a million phone calls and e-mails to Congress protesting the Iraq war, shutting down phone and fax lines throughout the nation’s capital.

Flash action By making it so simple for members to pass along their opinions, MoveOn and other online activists create a rich environment for viral marketing. And they bypass traditional media gatekeepers, who are now paying close attention to, and reporting on, their activities. Returning power to the people, activists have taken over much of PR and advertising’s role in influencing public opinion. Communiocations professionals have much to learn from them.

MoveOn has used the Internet to run lightening-fast “flash campaigns,” along with e-mail, to quickly focus a broad and deep segment of the American public into action within a specified time period.

When the group asked members to help pay $27,000 for an anti-war advertisement in the New York Times, supporters immediately sent more than $400,000 in donations. Funding grew to $1.3 million which was used for billboards, radio and TV spots and print ads in more than 100 papers.

MoveOn members are asked to pledge time and money to various causes, and have the option of joining a media corps which can mobilize in hours to voice an opinion about what they perceive as slanted media coverage.

Recently, MoveOn paired members and gave them guidelines for interviewing eachother so they would begin to have personal connections. Each partner was asked to report to MoveOn about the other’s interests and concerns. Thousands filed reports, though the group has not announced how the information will be used.

Hearts and Minds By sheer force of numbers, MoveOn is too big to be ignored by the media. Besides its numbers, its strength, and the strength of other activist sites, is in technology and willingness to continually try new methods of motivating members and reaching the media.

“Every time we did something, every time we showed leadership, our membership went up,” MoveOn founder Wes Boyd told a recent Take Back America conference in Washington, D.C.

The right wing has an online community as well. TownHall.com is an online umbrella organization “of conservative thoughts, ideas and actions.” The site has a page with a list of businesses and organizations including Ben & Jerry and Amazon that it claims give them a commission on sales “to help Townhall keep up the good work.” Town Hall’s right wing member organizations like Conservative USA also have activism Web sites, but they are not as well-organized, simply designed or elegantly researched as MoveOn.

Schools for change Some activist organizations use search engine placement to make their point. The Rainforest Activist Committee, incensed that Home Depot sources and sells old growth lumber, developed HomeDepotSucks.com www.homedepotsucks.com which chastises the company for using wood from endangered rain forests. The site comes up number three in a Google search for Home Depot, thanks to good search engine marketing tactics.

The Internet has many sites that promise to teach activists the most effective tactics. Act for Change (winner of a 2003 Webby Award for activism) provides activism tips on making your e-mails, calls and letters more effective.

NetAction provides an activist’s training course which explains the difference between traditional and Internet communication techniques, explains how to communicate with online media and gives before and after examples of an effective e-mail action alert.

Digital Freedom Network provides an Activist’s Workshop is devoted to helping human rights activists develop their technical knowledge. It includes tutorials, sample code, and other reference material useful for activists who have some electronic resources.

Organizer’s Collaborative recently ran its fourth annual sold-out conference on the grassroots use of technology, with topics like “New Software Tools for Grassroots Activism Campaigns,” and “Hands-on Demonstrations of Online Fundraising Tools.”

Lessons to be learned Guerilla marketing is nothing new. Its foundations are rooted in interactions between peoples in long lost ancient civilizations. Ever since people started having messages to convey they’ve needed effective ways to get their points across. Guerilla marketing is about influencing people to try or buy a product, to trust a company or to adopt a new point of view.

According to Ron Smith, Professor of Public Communication at Buffalo State College in New York, guerilla marketing goes back a long, long way. “John the Baptist,” he says, “is recognized in the social history of Christianity as the precursor, the advance man who was effective in generating in his publics an anticipation and enthusiasm for Jesus Christ.”

Samuel Adams is credited as the chief public relations strategist for the American movement for independence. His legacy includes using anniversaries as news pegs for publicity, creating activist organizations like the Sons of Liberty, and staging events like the Boston Tea party and hangings in effigy.

Sixty years ago. PR master Edward Bernays, known as “the father of spin,” made smoking cigarettes fashionable for women by connecting their right to smoke with their freedom to vote. His parade of debutantes who walked down Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue carrying “torches of freedom made every front page in America the next day. They called attention to a product, changed public opinion about it and promoted sales.

Yet these campaigns pale in comparison to the hold that MoveOn and other online activists’ have on members hearts and minds. Ignoring the power of activists is a recipe for trouble. Online activists represent a huge and young demographic, and that means corporations will depend on them for sales for decades to come. Those who ignore the concerns and preferences of this highly opinionated group do so at their own peril.

Today’s online activists have cutting edge tools, fast response and deeply committed members. If a company or product is ever targeted by one of the activist groups, a quick and honest response could help diffuse a potential PR disaster.

Watch closely, the revolution has begun.

Other online activist sites of note: