I’ve spent the past few weeks listening to dozens of people complain about the decline in privacy online. From Facebook and MySpace letting the government snoop on people’s profiles, to the idea of a National ID Card, people stir up a storm every time they discover some minute way the government can peek at their private lives. Facebook groups pop up, calling for petitions (haha, online petitions…) to stop the snooping. Most recently, this issue has come up in the media with MoveOn.org criticizing Facebook for targeting ads based on information in individual users profiles.

My question: why are we making such a big deal over this?

The same questions were raised when Gmail targeted their AdSense ads from keywords in a users’ inbox. Oh no. The same thing happens when a company targets certain magazines, and thus certain audiences, to advertise in. The real issue lies in people putting the supposidely super-private information (like what bands they like…) on the internet in the first place. Giving advertisors [in effect, anonymous] information on Facebook users isn’t making anyone’s life any less secure than it already was.

I’ve written about this before - how new forms of sponsorship and advertising are at the backbone of the current technology revolution. Without targeted advertising and exclusive sponsorships, ad revenue would plummet and organizations like Facebook would be unable to provide their services free of charge. If we don’t want the internet to come to a standstill, we have to be open to new forms of advertising. Sure, no one may particularly enjoy the main character of a television show pointing the logo side of a product towards the camera, but we got used to it. We’ll get used to this, too.