Facebook ticker broadcasts your every move, does not allow opt-outs

The new Facebook ticker automatically stalks your every move, and then shows it in real-time to all your friends. Now every “like” or comment or game or share is broadcast without your control. As a result, you are able to view information about friends of friends — people you don’t even know. Likewise, your photos, statuses and comments are appearing in front of people who don’t even know you. Facebook really should let you opt-out your activity from the real-time status ticker.

To take one example, here my friend Ariane has just become friends with someone named Gabriel. It’s great that they’re connected, but I just don’t care. I don’t know Gabriel at all and certainly don’t need to see her birthday, where she’s from, where she currently lives, and a picture of her child.

Apparently, some people have taken to posting this sort of message on their own walls:

“Please do me a favor and move your mouse over my name here, wait for the box to load and then move your mouse over the “Subscribe” link. Then scroll down and uncheck the “Comments and Likes”. I would really rather that my comments on friends and families posts not be made public, thank You! Then re-post this if you don’t want your every single move posted on the right side in the “Ticker Box” for everyone to see”

I guess that works! But so many steps — who will actually go through all of that? I think instead I will start posting this sort of message on my own wall:

“Please do me a favor and move your mouse over to http://plus.google.com/ where you have full control over what you broadcast to people AND over what is broadcast to you.”