Facebook’s latest privacy announcement is a political smokescreen

The privacy announcements today are a political smokescreen to enable Facebook to engage in more data gathering… They claim to protect user privacy at the same time as they work to undermine it.

— Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, explaining to the New York Times that Facebook’s announcement that it will allow users to see and alter what’s in their advertising profile is a cover for the major expansion in “opt-out” tracking that the company has planned.