I wasn’t the only person to raise an eyebrow over the Facebook announcement I blogged about earlier in the week.  Senator Al Franken of Minnesota and 3 of his peers are seriously concerned.    

There’s plenty of strong ammo from the Distinguished Gentlemen and Facebook is going to head to Washington to address the questions.  In case you don’t have a chance to click through to the article, my favorite quote actually isn’t from one of the elected officials….

“I can see how it would be advantageous to advertisers,” Kurt Opsahl of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said of Facebook’s “Open Graph” changes. “It’s just unclear how making this information public is advantageous to users.”

…and that’s just it.  Media companies like Facebook want to make their user base (you and me) as valuable as possible to advertisers.  But instead of sharing the value with you and me, typically, it’s at our expense.    Facebook wins. Advertisers win.  And guess who loses?  

Our personal information is incredibly valuable and sought after.  I don’t want to fight that it has value, in fact, ideally I’d like to maximize how valuable it is.  If someone wants to pay money to find out what movies I watch, bring it on!  But I’ll put up a  fight that my personal information belongs to me and not to Facebook.  Whatever my info is worth also belongs to me, not to Facebook. 

Gomper ’s purpose is to unlock your value as a consumer for yourgain.   If Gomper members want to share info, Gomper members make more money.      It’s an idea even congress can get behind.

Facebook · privacy