Facebook: Brutal Dishonesty
“Facebook does not track users across the web,” - A Facebook spokesperson on September 25, 2011 — “Generally, unlike other major Internet companies, we have no interest in tracking people.” - Facebook employee on September 25, 2011 — v.
Context & Ripple Effects
The accusation lands at the worst possible moment in Facebook's fall 2011 rollout. Days earlier, on September 29, news organizations had signed on to 'frictionless sharing' even as the feature drew confirmed criticism for pushing privacy boundaries, and the company launched Timeline — a product whose entire pitch asks users to hand over more of their history.
Against that backdrop, the September 25 statements — a spokesperson saying 'Facebook does not track users across the web' and an employee claiming the company has 'no interest in tracking people' — are being framed by UNCRUNCHED not as a misstatement but as deliberate deception. The piece is an argument about credibility, arriving just as Facebook reportedly prepares to launch its long-rumored iPad app and Project Spartan, both of which depend on partners believing what the company says about data.
First-order effects
- Facebook's public denials are now on the record and falsifiable, so any documented instance of cross-web tracking converts a routine PR denial into a credibility crisis for the company's spokespeople specifically.
- The news organizations that partnered on frictionless sharing on September 29 inherit the backlash risk they accepted, because the tracking question attaches directly to the same behavioral data their integrations rely on.
Second-order effects
- Project Spartan — the rumored web-app platform expected within days — requires publisher and developer trust in Facebook's data practices, and a substantiated dishonesty charge gives those partners reason to hedge before committing.
- Apple, whose relationship with Facebook is confirmed to be contentious and was nearly ruptured over the HP TouchPad app according to unconfirmed reports, gains negotiating leverage in any dispute where Facebook's data honesty is the open question.
Third-order effects
- If platform denials of cross-web tracking keep colliding with observed behavior, the structural endpoint is external scrutiny — regulators or legislators forcing disclosure of what is collected rather than accepting companies' characterizations of it.
- For the broader ad-supported web, the pattern points toward tracking becoming a disclosed, negotiated practice rather than a denied one, shifting competitive advantage to platforms that can survive transparency.
The trend: Consumer web platforms are moving from blanket denials of user tracking toward externally compelled disclosure, with each contradicted statement converting a PR problem into a regulatory one.