Tech2, a division of FirstPost, reports that “Facebook could be tracking all rainbow profile pictures“. In what I think is a nonsensical first paragraph, the report says:
Facebook’s News Feed experiment received a huge blow from its social media networkers. With the new rainbow coloured profile picture that celebrates equality of marriage turned us into ‘lab rats’ again? Facebook is probably tracking all those who are using its new tool to change the profile picture, believes The Atlantic.
I’m surprised things like this still makes news. It is a feature (not a bug) of any good organisation that it learns from its user interactions and user behaviour, and hence tracking how users respond to certain kinds of news or updates is a fundamental part of how Facebook should behave.
And Facebook is a company that constantly improves and updates the algorithm it uses in order to decide what updates to show whom. And to do that, it needs to maintain data on who liked what, commented on what, and turned off what kind of updates. Collecting and maintaining and analysing such data is a fundamental, and critical, part of Facebook’s operations, and expecting them not to do so is downright silly (and it would be a downright silly act on part of the management if they stop experimenting or collecting data).
Whenever you sign on to an app or a service, you need to take it as a given that the app is collecting data and information from you. And that if you are not comfortable with this kind of data capture, you are better off not using the app. Of course, network effects mean that it is not that easy to live like you did in “the world until yesterday”.
This seems like yet another case of Radically Networked Outrage by outragers not having enough things to outrage about.