Mortal Kombat Wrongfully Accused

Colorado Teens Accused of Killing 7-Year-Old Girl With 'Mortal Kombat' Game Moves

Thursday, December 20, 2007

JOHNSTOWN, Colorado — Two teens have been charged with killing the 7-year-old sister of one of them by beating her with imitations of moves from the "Mortal Kombat" video game, prosecutors said.

Lamar Roberts, 17, and Heather Trujillo, 16, were charged as adults on one count each of felony child abuse causing death, state prosecutor Robert Miller said in court documents released Wednesday and filed a day earlier.

According to a police affidavit, the teens were baby-sitting Trujillo's half-sister, Zoe Garcia, on Dec. 6 while the girl's mother was at work. Zoe lost consciousness and stopped breathing after the teens hit, kicked and body-slammed her, imitating moves used in the video game, the document said...

...The witness told police that Roberts said Zoe had told them to stop wrestling. According to the affidavit, when the witness asked why they didn't stop, he responded, "I don't know; I was drunk."

Source

Let's begin by having a look at the title of this article.
"Colorado Teens Accused of Killing 7-Year-Old Girl With 'Mortal Kombat' Game Moves".
This...is 100% unnecessary.

Why?

Because it could have served the same purpose without ever referencing the video game. All the tragedy-hounds would have gotten their daily fill of death, and we could have gone about our business after adding two more names to the "Gee, Aren't Kids Today Totally F'ed Up" list. But instead, they chose to throw journalistic integrity out the window and take a more sensational, attention grabbing route instead. Now, by villifying Mortal Kombat, it becomes the perceived focus of the article, though it is only mentioned twice in the article, 3 times if you count the title. This is no longer an article about some braindead girl killing her half-sister with the help of her drunken, underage, similarly mentally-handicapped friend.

Now it's an article about how video games will kill your children.

"But they were playing Mortal Kombat, and they beat the child to death! It's applicable!"

Ok, let's take some of today's headlines, and re-imagine them as they might have appeared coming out of the Fox News bullpen.

"Benazir Bhutto killed in Pakistan; Copy of PS2 game 'Hitman' found in suicide bomber's apartment"
"Police: Teen died saving friend from tiger; Seigfried and Roy tickets found on victim"
"New home sales at 12-1/2 year low, while website Second Life posts record numbers"
"Toddler's brain pierced by screwdriver; President Bush pushes for a complete recall"



Now, do any of those headlines REALLY sound improbable? No, they really don't. If you saw them on CNN.com, you'd buy them hook, line, and sinker, because that's what you've been trained to do. And you're paying for it, by allowing the news media to warp your perceptions of the world. This article is trying to tell you that video games make you kill people.

But here's what I get out of it.

Two teens, languishing at home over their winter break, got bored and decided to beat the hell out of a little girl. These children, the unfortunate end product of a disasterous public school system made worse by the Bushmeister's No Child Left Behind march toward illiteracy, very likely would have been raising their own child soon enough, had they not proven themselves unfit members of the human race just prior to a drunken New Year's Eve conception. The teens' parents could not be reached for comment, as their phone numbers were not listed. This is not due to any sort of privacy concerns on their part, they simply used this month's welfare check on cocaine instead of paying the phone bill. Oh, and the 17 year old was apparently drunk at the time, which was only mentioned once (1/3 as many times as Mortal Kombat).

So, who are the villians in this story? According to Fox News, it's Mortal Kombat.
But if you turn your brain on before you read the story, we get a different lineup.

Public schools
The teens' parents
Alcohol
Breakdown of the laws of Natural Selection

Now, how does any of that involve video games? You're right, it doesn't. But is it really safe journalism to print "Under-educated, poorly-raised teens murder young girl while inebriated"? No way. We need a good scapegoat.

Please. Stop blaming it on video games. Let's take some responsibility here. Put the blame where it belongs, and let's try to keep our kids safe, okay?



In other news, Kenneth Copeland is just one of six major Christian television ministries under scrutiny by a senator who is asking questions about the evangelists' lavish spending and possible abuses of their tax-exempt status.

Can anyone else say, "It's about blessed time"?

UPDATE
Thanks to The Brainy Gamer, I now have some information to back up my (formerly) fictional statements about the way these kids were living. What follows was found on the Brainy Gamer blog:

Court records show a history of neglect and abuse charges against Dana Trujillo, Zoe Garcia's mother, in both Colorado and New Mexico.

Trujillo has had six children with four different fathers, one of whom had been living with Trujillo and the girls until he was arrested Dec. 3 for escaping from jail earlier this year.[1]

Authorities in Socorro, N.M., filed three counts of abandonment or abuse of a child against Trujillo in November 2003. The complaint states that Trujillo left her children in the house with a babysitter and didn't return that night. A neighbor complained the next day, and police went to the house with the paternal grandmother of the Garcia girls and woke up the babysitter in the back bedroom. The girls said they hadn't eaten or bathed that day.[2]

The girls had been removed from the home twice by authorities before being returned to their mother.

School District Superintendent Dr. Martin Foster has confirmed that the district sent a referral to the county Social Services agency at the beginning of the school year because staff had noticed marks and bruises on Zoe.[3]

The boyfriend charged has confessed to being drunk at the time of the incident.

See? Quit blaming video games! It's time to take this one to the parents, and also, to the "journalists" who "report" these stories, full of sensational, fear-mongering spin. Also from the Brainy Gamer post, let's have a look at some of the headlines spawned by this fiasco:

"Teens Charged in 'Mortal Kombat' Killing" - CNN
"Mortal Kombat Killing: Zoe Garcia Murdered by Sister, Boyfriend" - The Post Chronicle
"Sister Charged in 'Mortal Kombat' Death of 7-year-old - The Denver Post
"Teens Charged in 'Mortal Kombat' Death" - USA Today
"Still No Burial Plans in 'Mortal Kombat' Killing" - Fox News Colorado
"Teens Charged in Video Game-Related Slaying" - WJBF-TV
"Mortal Kombat" Teens Fatality 7-year-old - CrunchGear

How's that for good reporting, based on what we now know?

SUB-UPDATE

Ironically, the CNN article with the headline "Teens Charged in 'Mortal Kombat' Killing" provides readers with links to not only this very article, but also it's counterpart on The Brainy Gamer. Basically, each of these articles point out that CNN (among others) is being highly irresponsible in the way it reports this type of news. Yay for self-debasement!

I Hear Advertising-People.....

...[a billboard] for "Paranormal State"...uses technology manufactured by Holosonic that transmits an "audio spotlight" from a rooftop speaker so that the sound is contained within your cranium. The technology, ideal for museums and libraries or environments that require a quiet atmosphere for isolated audio slideshows, has rarely been used on such a scale before.

Source

Now they can beam ads straight into your noggin. It seems likes it's been the theme around here lately to hate on advertisers, so I thought I'd throw this one out there.

Get out your tin-foil hats, kiddies. Your personal space just went bye-bye.

They're Reading Our Minds!!!

Okay, okay, okay. I try. I try so hard not to just copy and paste things into this magic box that shows you wordy-thingies. I do everything I can to add my own spin, my own interpretation. But this really speaks for itself.

Thank you, Cracked.com!

Thoughts of the Average American Television Viewer


-------------(As Imagined By Network Executives)

"If I cannot see sports scores, stock reports, and weather forecasts scrolling across the bottom of the screen at all times, I will kill myself."

"I can't wait to see this overweight middle aged comic and his disproportionately attractive wife deal with their adolescent children in a humorously unorthodox, though ultimately conservative manner."

"I don't see enough petty, selfish individuals in my daily life. Therefore, I will tune in to tonight's scheduled reality television show."

"You cannot make a television show too stupid for me to watch."

"I was going to change the channel until the network reminded me, halfway through the first commercial break, that the program would 'be right back.' I had previously been under the impression that the program was lost and would never return."

"I find this sitcom intellectually challenging."

"I am completely unaware of the fact that the corporation being investigated by the FBI in this news segment owns this news station. Even if I were aware of this fact, I would put great faith in the objectivity and journalistic integrity of this enormous media conglomerate."

"Becker is not on TV enough."





--------------------(as Imagined by a Music Executive)

"I'm glad this rock band has a limited repertoire of similarly progressing power chords. If their songs were more creative, it would confuse me, and I would not buy their album."

"As a member of the African-American community, I readily identify with this hip-hop artist's misogynistic views and propensity towards crime."

"That beautiful and scantily clad young woman, whose name escapes me at the moment, is my favorite musical artist of all time."

"It's a good thing my carbonated soft-drink came with one free music download, for I would have felt uncomfortable downloading free music on the internet."

"Finally a halftime show that combines my love of hard-nosed championship football and pre-pubescent teen-pop!"

"I will buy any CD that produces sound."





---------------(as [Correctly] Imagined by Politicians)

"I am upset that I work full time and still fall below the poverty line. I blame queers and people of another race."

"Clearly, the best way to reduce crime is to build more prisons. Evidence linking poverty and crime is flimsy at best."

"At least both candidates favor education initiatives with humanitarian names that direct money towards arbitrary and biased standardized tests. Hiring more qualified teachers and rebuilding crumbling inner-city schools would yield questionable results."

"The rich do enough for this country. They should not have to pay higher taxes than the rest of us."

"I fear that we might one day be attacked by a country whose economy is based almost entirely on trade with the United States. Therefore, we must spend more on our military than every other nation combined. This will make other countries feel more secure, and they will whore their underclass to us rather than initiate an arms race."

"Morality is derived from creatively interpreting apocryphal texts, not the desire to reduce human suffering."

"If we give free health care to poor people by taxing the super-rich, the economy, and quite possibly the universe, will collapse."

"I see many distinct differences between these two courageous candidates."

"Congratulations on successfully side-stepping another important question and leaving me lost in forest of vague rhetoric and empty catch-phrases. You've got my vote."

"One American life is worth approximately ten European lives, four hundred thousand African lives, and fifteen million Arab lives."

"A presidential candidate's war record is the deciding factor in his ability to oversee the American economy."

"The rich white liberal cares about me more than the rich white conservative, though they both care about me very much."





-------------(as Imagined By a Marketing Executive)

"I prefer the product with the attractive salespeople."

"I was heretofore unaware of the maximum safe duration for a chemically induced erection."

"That recognizable athlete scores all those points because of his brand-name sports beverage, right?"

"This song reminds me of my youth. Therefore, I will buy."

"I can only afford $74.99 on a new pair of old looking blue jeans; $75 is just too much."

"I would have gone to an amateur poetry reading rather than the monster truck rally had the gentleman on the radio commercial not been yelling."

"Wow. I had no idea smoking was so bad for you."

"If I buy this face cream, I will be as beautiful as the actress endorsing it."

"After hearing rap music on their commercial, I can now trust this giant white-owned corporation to fulfill all my consumer needs. It no longer bothers me that the CEO eliminated all employee benefits to build his own country club."

"There is very likely buried treasure somewhere in the backyard of my suburban Chicago home. If only there were a way of detecting the presence of metal underground."

"Yes, I have been injured recently. And, no, I hadn't considered litigation until this trustworthy family man suggested it."

"I can't believe I voted for a politician so soft on crime. I will not make the same mistake this election. I am also far more likely to vote for the smiling candidate in the color photograph."

"This electronics super store has so many things I need at such great prices that I might just kill myself."

"With that many explosions, how could the movie not be good?"

"I will enjoy your inexpensive, highly potent alcohol responsibly."

"This celebrity who appears to be in good physical shape must be an expert on health and nutrition."

"When passing a car dealership with a catchy jingle, I will remember that they have fair prices and know that I am a busy man. When I finally have some free time, I will buy the first safe, reliable, and easily financed automobile I see."

Today, A Blogger Saved My Life

Thanks go to David Wong, the Assistant Editor of Cracked.com, for writing the article that very well may save us all. Trust me.

It's called "7 Reasons the 21st Century is Making You Miserable".

Here they are, in no particular order (or maybe just the order Wong discusses them):

#1. We don't have enough annoying strangers in our lives.
#2. We don't have enough annoying friends, either.
#3. Texting is a shitty way to communicate.
#4. Online company only makes us lonelier.
#5. We don't get criticized enough.
#6. We're victims of the Outrage Machine.
#7. We feel worthless, because we actually are worth less.

Now, do I normally go and find life-changing articles on Cracked.com? Except for that one about 6 Singers Who Are Mistaken About Their Raw Sexuality (anything that makes fun of Kid Rock is tops in my book), no, I go to Cracked for a laugh. But, despite it's devil-may-care tone and frequently vulgar humor, this article raises a surprising number of good points. Actually, I have a hard time disagreeing with [i]anything[/i] Wong says in this piece.

So go read it. All of it. And be a better human being with me.

Monday Minis!!

BRB...G2P

Now THAT'S technology! So, here's the situation. You're vacationing in Europe, soaking up the sights...and the ale. After stumbling out of your 18th pub, you decide you need to make some room in the old waterworks before visiting the next house of sin and suds. Now, you COULD just drain the main vein in an alleyway, but you'll only be adding to the estimated 10,000 gallons of recycled beer that gets unloaded in the streets of Westminster every year. Try this instead.

Tourists, theatergoers, shoppers and pub patrons in London's West End can now text the word "toilet" — and receive a text back with the address of the nearest public facility.

Source

Call information? Hell no! Text "toilet"! What won't they think of next (that question is ALMOST getting scary!)?



Facebook backs down
(Go here for the original rant, if you don't know the story.)

It seems like Facebook has decided to bite the bullet and admit that it made a mistake. Facebook users are now given a global "opt-out" option with regards to the new Beacon advertising program. It's still tough to find, requiring users to access the "External Websites" portion of the "Privacy" section of their profiles, but it's there, which is a big change from where we stood last week.

"We've made a lot of mistakes building this feature, but we've made even more with how we've handled them," Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook's blog. "We simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it."

Empowering to users block Beacon entirely "is big step in the right direction, and we hope it begins an industrywide trend that puts the basic rights of Internet users ahead of the wish lists of corporate advertisers," said Adam Green, a spokesman for MoveOn.org.

Source

Now, this is just the first step. Facebook got busted, but look at what it took to get the "opt-out" added to the program (example: 65,000 Facebook users signing a petition hosted by MoveOn.org). Your information is valuable. Be sure you know who has access to it, and how.

Now, there's still the issue of how Beacon works, by sending ALL user data from affiliated sites to Facebook servers. Whether you're a Facebook user or not, Mark Zuckerberg still knows about your Christmas purchaes from his Nike affiliates. Facebook "deletes all information from users who have not opted-in to the program", but even if that is the case, they shouldn't have that info in the first place.

Perhaps it's time to take the fight to the affiliates. When word got out about Eidos' potential involvement in the termination of a Gamespot reviewer over a less-than-enthusiastic review of one of Eidos' new games, users immediately began pulling support from Gamespot and their advertisers. We've seen the effect we can have. These people are working for our dollars, people. Let's show them where the power lies.

Is it necessary for us to start boycotting Facebook affiliates? As long as those affiliates are comfortable sharing YOUR information with Facebook, whether they have your permission or not, then I say yes. We will not be toyed with, not in this world where identity theft is only one click away.

UPDATE 10:02 p.m.
Further proof that Facebook affiliates send info no matter what, from the blog of Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg.

If you select that you don't want to share some Beacon actions or if you turn off Beacon, then Facebook won't store those actions even when partners send them to Facebook.

Source

"Even when partners send them to Facebook". Way to go Mark. Throw them under the bus.


Ahhh! Cooties!

They pull their sleeves down over their hands to open doors, surreptitiously sanitize while on buses, subways and airplanes. At the gym, they towel off their elliptical trainers like car detailers in search of a $100 tip. At work, they’re ready to break out the Clorox the minute somebody coughs.

Who are these incredibly sterile souls? They’re the citizens of a germ-conscious segment of the country you might call hand-sanitation nation.

Source

These people are contributing to shorter life spans and the prevalence of superbugs and drug-resistant bacteria. You know the commercials for all those handy disinfectant wipes and crap? The ones that kill 99% of germs and bacteria? I think it's time to start a new ad campaign.

"NEW! Leaves 1% of the bacteria behind to mutate and breed into something even worse!"

Think about it. How long have people been getting cancer? Or AIDS? Or the flu-that-kills-you? Barring the whole "back in the old days we didn't know what was killing us" argument, I'd say, not very long. Yes, people are healthier, but almost EVERY DAY we learn about a new health threat. Where are all these coming from? Some of them have always been around, but our bodies could handle them. Now, we've antibacterialed ourselves to the point that dirt could probaly make us ill (and I mean nice, clean dirt). Every time you use antibacterial soap, you're killing your immune system. That just makes it so that you have to use the stuff more often. Which makes your immune system weaker. And so eventually, antibacterial soap becomes a must-have for survival, because the immune system went the way of the appendix, and atrophied into nothing, since we were no longer using it for anything.

Want a hint? Do you know what HIV is? Let's ask wikipedia.

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a retrovirus that can lead to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a condition in humans in which the immune system begins to fail, leading to life-threatening opportunistic infections.

Guess what? I know this is an exaggeration, but every time you antibacterialize yourself, you're bringing yourself one step closer toward voluntarily giving yourself HIV. HIV/AIDS kills the immune system ENTIRELY, and any little old bug that wants to can waltz right in and kill your squeaky clean ass. And you're signing up for it, every time you buy a bottle of antibacterial sanitizer.

PLUS! It's not healthy whe nyou kill all the germs. But what's even worse are the ones that survive! There are new drug-resistant strains of EVERYTHING popping up around the world daily. When will the germs start to win the race against the medical researchers that keep finding new ways to kill them? Seriously, if we've had flu vaccines for DECADES, why isn't it dead? Why does it get more vicious every year? Because we keep making it smarter, and hardier. Yup.

We're killing ourselves with clean.
Which is why I only bathe twice a week.
I may smell, but I'm healthier than you.
XP

What WON'T Money Buy These Days?

Well, well, well. Do you like Mountain Dew? How about that shiny new Alienware laptop? When you bought these products, did you think about where your money was going, what was being done with it? In the past, we used to be very concerned about where our consumer dollars were winding up, cause we sure didn't want to promote the spread of communism by purchasing anything that was made in China. Now, however, we're beginning to see an entirely new trend.
It seems that quality control is out, and dollar control is in.

Advertisers are starting to think that they control the market. They can tell you what to buy or not to buy, where to buy it, how much it should cost, and whether or not you get a free calendar with your purchase. Now they're even beginning to tell you whether or not you should enjoy your purchases.

The past week marked the end of an era at GameSpot. After over a decade in a variety of editorial roles, Jeff Gerstmann's tenure as editorial director has ended.

"Jeff was a central figure in the creation and evolution of GameSpot, having written hundreds of previews and reviews, and anchoring much of our multimedia content," said Ricardo Torres, editorial director of previews and events. "The award-winning editorial team he leaves behind wish him nothing but good luck in his future endeavors."

Due to legal constraints and the company policy of GameSpot parent CNET Networks, details of Gerstmann's departure cannot be disclosed publicly. However, contrary to widespread and unproven reports, his exit was not a result of pressure from an advertiser.
Source

So, after Eidos dumped tons of ad money on Gamespot, Jeff gives the game a 6.0 review, and issues a scathing video blog review as well. There was originally some controversy within the controversy, with some Gamespot/CNet/Eidos supporters claiming Jeff had hardly played the game at all before giving his negative and highly critical review, citing "Jeff's Xbox Live Gamercard, which only has six achievements and 90 Gamerscore points for the game". Jeff fought back, stating in a recent interview that "A reviewer's Xbox Live Gamercard is rarely a good place to look for answers about how much that reviewer has (or hasn't) played a game...For the record, I saw both endings in Kane & Lynch before writing about it." So, based on that quote, and the fact that his video review is very detailed about the game's ongoing flaws, it is very doubtful that Jeff only gave Kane & Lynch a quick glance before setting it on fire.

Next, CNet and Gamespot claimed that Gerstmann was fired for repeated incidents of "tone". Tycho of PennyArcade added his own two cents in a blog of his own.

Management claimed to have spoken to Jeff about his "tone" before, and no doubt it was this tone that created tensions between their editorial content, the direction of the site, and the carefully crafted relationships that allowed Gamespot to act as an engine of revenue creation. After Gerstmann's savage flogging of Kane & Lynch, a game whose marketing investment on Gamespot alone reached into the hundreds of thousands, Eidos (we are told) pulled hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of future advertising from the site...Would that it were only about the 6.0 - at least then you'd know how to score something if you wanted to keep your Goddamned job. No, this was worse: the more nebulous "tone" would be the guide. I assume it was designed to terrify them.

So, you can't even count on good, safe numbers anymore. You have to worry about your "tone". What you apparently DON'T have to worry about anymore is doing your job. All you need to do is write what the ad-men tell you to write, and everyone is happy and employed. How hard is it? Eidos pushed a game to market for the holiday season, rushed the production, and ended up with a crappy product. Jeff caught all their flaws, and, if you watch the video review, he tries REALLY hard to push the good parts of the game, but in the end, the mass of flaws and shortcomings far outweighs the tiny shiny parts that Jeff points out to us. And so, we have a man who was fired from a position he'd held for over 11 years...just for doing his job.

And how has this affected the world? Well, let's see. Pepsi obviously wants no part of Gerstmanngate, as evidenced by their speedy removal of advertising content from the Gamespot website. Apparently, as of December 1st, all game-related ads had been pulled from the Gamespot site and replaced by ads for Mountain Dew, Dell, and Sony products. However, early in the A.M. on December 2nd, all the Mountain Dew ads disappeared from the site, according to SarcasticGamer.

Very early this morning, the Pepsi/Mountain Dew ads came down. Coincidence? Maybe. But it seems rather unlikely that Pepsi bought a one day ad on Gamespot for Mountain Dew. It’s not like they’re on a tight budget. At one point yesterday, literally every ad space came up Dew. Now it’s Alienware (Dell). Lots and lots of Alienware.

Additionally, Gamespot members are rising up in favor of Gerstmann. How are they making their feelings known?

At last report, over 500 individuals have canceled their pay subscription to the site, with many more threatening to do so unless an explanation is given. But they've already moved past this, and some very upset GameSpot fans are starting to get organized. They're not talking about a simple boycott of the site; they're talking about boycotting the advertisers that use GS for promotion.

So, if Gamespot wants to "[think] with their wallet," as one poster put it, then disgruntled gamers will hit them where it hurts, by pulling as much money as possible from the people they feel are responsible for this silly event. It's a double-edged sword; by shutting out advertisers, Gamespot takes a hit for listening to the bottom line instead of good sense, and advertisers are informed that they are not the ones who get to tell us what's good or bad about a product.

In a loosely related development, social-networking site Facebook is now taking fire from leftist activist group MoveOn.org, among others, for it's new advertising network, Beacon, a part of the new Facebook Ads campaign.

Beacon is the internal project name at Facebook around an effort to work with third parties and gain access to very specific user data. An example may be a purchase of a book or DVD from Amazon. Under Beacon, the fact of that purchase will be sent to Facebook and automatically included in the user’s News Feed...The feed information includes the user name, what they did (bought something), what they bought, and where.
Source

Now, the third-party advertisers don't get any money for this. What they DO get is a free ad out of the link placed in the News Feed. Facebook, on the other hand, gets VERY specific data on its users, allowing them to more efficiently target advertising to the user in question. Sounds like a win-win situation, right? The problem arises when we look at how the data is collected.

With the new Beacon program, any time you make a purchase online, it will try to publish that action in your News Feed. This could pose several problems. MoveOn spokesman Adam Green addresses a few of these potenial issues.

[Adam] cited Facebook user testimonials that ranged from members who said their entire Christmas lists had been published on their News Feeds (spoiling many a surprise in the process) to student activists who were concerned that sensitive purchases might show up and result in serious consequences--"If a college kid rents Brokeback Mountain and some homophobic person on his campus sees that, that could be a real problem," he explained.
Source

Now, under the new Beacon program, Facebook users are given the choice to opt-out, but the option is apparently not user-friendly in the least. The option is well hidden within the Beacon framework, and there is currently no option for a global opt-out, meaning that a user who decides not to publish his latest purchase from Nike will be prompted again when he buys Live Free or Die Hard from Blockbuster.com. MoveOn believes that users should have the option to activate Beacon, not be forced to try and find ways to turn it off.

Facebook retaliated with statements pushing the integrity of their site. In a response issued on Nov. 20th, Facebook tried to downplay the fact that they were tracking your every move on the internet.

...this information is not public, it isn't an invasion of privacy. "Information is shared with a small selection of a user's trusted network of friends, not publicly on the Web or with all Facebook users," the statement explained. "Users also are given multiple ways to choose not to share information from a participating site, both on that site and on Facebook."
Source

So, it's not public. Only your friends can see it, if you've set up your Facebook account preferences with that in mind. But if you've got several friends (and some Facebook users clock in with thousands of friends), then could it not be argued that any information shared with them could very easily be considered "public"? MoveOn.org seems to think so, and they apparently have many Facebook users behind them, stating that "Facebook users across the nation are outraged that the books, movies, and gifts they buy privately on other sites are being displayed publicly without permission".

Now, originally, this was not an issue. According to MoveOn and TechCrunch, early screenshots of Beacon did in fact include a global opt-out option that would allow users to basically kill Beacon, never to see it again. The final version? No such button, my friends. In a rather pointed statement, Adam Green lays it on the line.

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
Source

Facebook decided to counter all this stink with a statement of their own, saying that user data would not be shared "unless a user receives notifications both on a participating website and on Facebook". However, these notifications are apparently not very clear, reportedly only consisting of a quick pop-up at the bottom of the user's screen, which the user, browsing a totally non-Facebook website, very likely won't ever notice while trying to be sure that his or her shipping address is correctly entered. This is, of course, a replacement for the original global opt-out that was removed "days before Beacon's launch", according to Adam Green.

TechCrunch briefly re-visited the issue after MoveOn dragged them into the ring by citing early Beacon screenshots found on the TechCrunch site. The article clearly tries not to take sides, but makes one fatal flaw.

Facebook’s best move is to make the new Beacon service opt-in only. But that reduces the value of the service to third parties who supply the information to Facebook, and get free links in return.

And, once again, we see this new initiative. Advertisers are worth more than users.

Facebook later responded by tweaking the way Beacon operates. Now, when Beacon sees a purchase, the external site displays a pop-up at the bottom of the screen asking whether the user wishes to publish this information to Facebook. If this notice is ignored, then the request will be queued, and the user will receive a notification the next time they visit their Facebook page, where they are again given the option to publish the information to their News Feed, or to remove the activity. There is also, now, an option under the "External Websites" Privacy settings in Facebook to allow users to change how Beacon notifies them about these stories. Users are able to choose whether they want to either Always or Never "Allow these websites to send stories to my profile", as well as a third "Notify Me First" option. HOWEVER, each external site must be dealt with individually. This means that each time a user who wishes to opt-out entirely does business with a Beacon-enabled site, they must then go to their Privacy settings and disable notifications from the new site (Source).

But here's where it starts to get really entertaining.

According to one security engineer’s analysis, Beacon partners transmit data to Facebook in bulk about members who visit their site. This is true even for those who opt out of Beacon by clicking on “No Thanks” when asked if the data can be shared with Facebook. The data is sent anyway. Facebook clarifies that it does not do anything with this opted-out data, and in fact deletes it from its servers. But the deletion occurs on Facebook’s servers, not the advertisers’. [Update: It gets even worse. Beacon partners are sending data indiscriminately about every single visitor to their sites back to Facebook, whether or not those people are even Facebook members. This includes very detailed user behavior. Again, Facebook says it deletes most of this data. But what are the partner sites thinking? They might as well be giving Facebook access to their bank accounts.]
Source

Don't believe what you're reading? Try it again, only this time, from a statement Facebook emailed to Computer Associates blogger Stefan Berteau.

When a Facebook user takes a Beacon-enabled action on a participating site, information is sent to Facebook in order for Facebook to operate Beacon technologically. If a Facebook user clicks "No, thanks" on the partner site notification, Facebook does not use the data and deletes it from its servers. Separately, before Facebook can determine whether the user is logged in, some data may be transferred from the participating site to Facebook. In those cases, Facebook does not associate the information with any individual user account, and deletes the data as well.
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So, no matter who you are, if you're shopping at a Beacon affiliated site, Facebook knows about it, whether you hit "No, Thanks" or not. Even NON-Facebook user data is being submitted to Facebook. So when your grandmother, who has never even heard of Facebook, saves an article on the NY Times, Mark Zuckerberg knows about it. Now, on the advertiser's side, this is a blessing. It leaves them without all the leg-work of deciding what data to send to Facebook. But it also make Facebook privy to info it has absolutely no right to. In light of all this, advertisers are reportedly jumping ship left and right. Coca-Cola and Overstock.com were on board with Beacon when it launched, as an opt-out program, but now both companies have withdrawn from the fray since Beacon swapped paradigms to opt-in, and another big money account, Travelocity, is starting to look sideways at the whole deal as well. Sorry, guys. No easy ad-space for you! Let's take the paranoid angle for just a moment. Originally, Coca-Cola, Overstock, and Travelocity were all for a program that would force users to inadvertantly advertise for them, but now, when the dung strikes the rotating blades, and revised program where the user can choose whether or not to support the Beacon program, the payoff isn't worth the potential scandal. And so, the rats desert the sinking ship.

Interestingly enough, most of the information I was able to find on the Beacon scandal was presented by CNet, the company behind Gamespot.com. Why would a company even now deeply embroiled in it's own advertisers-vs.-users battle choose to follow a similar story SO very closely? Are they trying to point out fellow screw-ups in an effort to spread the blame around, or otherwise dilute the issue?

And after all is said and done, what is the issue? I'll lay it out for you. Corporate America wants you. They want your dollars, your opinions, your behavior, and basically the world you live in, to all be under their express control. The want you to have a choice, but they only want you to have the choices they approve of. So the next time you go to buy an Eidos game, think about how many advertising dollars it cost them to get your favorite magazine or blog to tout that game as "the best thing since Super Mario". The next time you see a targeted ad pop up on a webpage, perhaps you should stop and think about how Travelocity knew you were looking into a Caribbean getaway. Did you do something to prompt this? Is there any way to prevent it?

Your information is out there. What are you doing to protect it?