Facebook Tricks You!

Look at that. That prompt is asking you if you want to authorize the Washingtion Post Social Reader to access your profile and IMPERSONATE YOU ON FACEBOOK! Is that obvious to the average user who sees this? I don't think so! This prompt is designed to get people to give away personal information and let somebody else use their Facebook profiles WITHOUT REALIZING IT.

See, this is why Facebook is evil. They have no compunctions about deceiving their users.

This is part of a broader trend that is especially pronounced online. It seems that advertising these days is all about deception! Not long ago, I saw a Google ad that contained text similar to the following:

I thought this was pretty neat. Check it out!

It's written to sound like a personal recommendation from a friend. It is specifically designed to override the "I should be suspicious of this entity" impulse that many people (most, hopefully) get when somebody tries to sell them something. It's an advertiser masquerading as a friend!

Have the people in advertising simply lost all sense of decency? I don't remember it always being this bad. I hope they don't wonder why people use things like Adblock.