Spotify has been forced to introduce new privacy features to its music streaming software after complaints by users about its Facebook integration.
It’s the first climbdown by an app maker after last week’s f8 introduced “frictionless sharing”, whereby every song listened to is shared on Facebook by default.
After Spotify chief executive Daniel Ek appeared on stage with Mark Zuckerberg at f8, the service quietly introduced the requirement that all new users sign up with a Facebook account, rather than the usual email. The application also defaulted to sharing all a user’s listening habits, all of which prompted hundreds of complaints on Spotify’s blog and GetSatisfaction support forum.
Mr Ek also found himself taking flak on Twitter, which is where he announced the solution on Thursday – a new “private listening” mode:
“We’re rolling out a new client as we speak where you can temporarily hide your guilty pleasures. It works like a browser’s private mode.”
Spotify already allows users to opt out of Facebook sharing completely, so users wishing to hide their Abba fetish must remember to flip the switch every time they log in.
“We’ll try lots of things, and probably screw up from time to time, but we value feedback and will make changes based on it,” Mr Ek said on Twitter earlier this week.
Spotify’s experience comes as privacy campaigners sharpened their knives over the whole concept of “frictionless sharing”.
Despite Facebook’s claim at f8 that it was working hand-in-hand with privacy groups on its new features, ten of the most prominent of those groups in the US today filed a letter with federal regulators complaining that Facebook’s new features violate privacy standards.
While the groups acknowledge that users must opt in to the new apps, they say the fact that the company prompts and encourages people to share the kind of personal information detailed in the new entertainment and lifestyle apps “is detrimental to consumer privacy not only because the information will be exploited by Facebook and third parties for advertising and other purposes, but also because Facebook could unexpectedly and improperly make significant changes to its Terms of Service or Privacy Policy that would further expose users’ personal information. Indeed, Facebook has a long history of improperly changing its service in ways that harm users’ privacy.”
The groups’ main complaint is that information users shared on Facebook before the introduction of the new Timeline and Ticker features was shared under a different privacy regime, with a different set of user expectations. Now that information is retroactively available and easier to find in the new features. “For users who wish to maintain something approaching their old privacy settings, Facebook has offered solutions that are confusing, impractical, and unfair,” the groups wrote.
Users who choose to opt out of Facebook altogether are forced to give up other services that they may want to use. “It is unrealistic to expect consumers to forego their favourite music, gaming, or reading applications simply because they want to maintain their pre-existing privacy protections,” the groups said.
Facebook responded by saying that it offered users “complete control over whether their information is shared and with whom”:
“Some groups believe people shouldn’t have the option to easily share the songs they are listening to or other content with their friends… If someone doesn’t want an app story to be seen by their friends, we offer numerous controls both before and after the fact. They can choose not take the action on Facebook, remove it from their Timeline, delete it completely, change their privacy settings, or disconnect from the app at anytime.”
By Tim Bradshaw and April Dembosky
