[noahm]

Because facebook only has my pictures if I choose to post them there. This is easy to avoid. Facebook only has my browsing habits if I choose to allow content from their servers while viewing non-facebook content. This is also avoidable, albeit less easily. Avoiding sending email to gmail users is far more difficult. Avoiding receiving email from gmail users is even more difficult. Additionally, the cost (at least measured subjectively in terms of inconvenience) of avoiding all contact with gmail users is far greater than the cost of avoiding facebook.

So, to answer your question more directly, facebook doesn't "get a pass". Facebook simply doesn't get used.

[ericleung]

Not quite sure I agree with that. I think the argument is that Facebook has pictures of me as long as any one of my friends has a picture of me, and has posted it on their own Facebook.

Similar to the problem with Google having access to a large percentage of emails, Facebook will have pictures of me regardless of whether I choose to personally have a Facebook account or not. Assuming that I do have a Facebook, with a network of friends, they can also tag me in their pictures (and therefore available to Facebook) even if my own privacy settings are turned all the way up.

[camus2]

> Because facebook only has my pictures if I choose to post them there.

Facebook has your pictures when your friends that are on Facebook post pictures of you.

And even if you are not on Facebook,i'm pretty sure facebook has a "shadow account" system to track people even if they dont signup.

[ben1040]

I have a Facebook account with zero friends on it. I used it to "own" an API key for an app I built for a freelance client.

The "People You May Know" screen on that Facebook account has plenty of people I do in fact know.

I imagine through people uploading their address books and then Facebook mining shared connections, they inferred a bunch of my network without me doing anything at all.

[ilolu]

I use Ghostery and block Facebook content from other sites. But what I don't like about Google or Facebook's behavior is that that none of my non-techy friends know that they are being tracked every where. And you cant expect them to understand it too. I find that behavior bad.

[icebraining]

Facebook only has my browsing habits if I choose to allow content from their servers while viewing non-facebook content. This is also avoidable, albeit less easily.

To most people, it's black magic. In fact, they don't even know that such tracking is possible.