BigBrotherAwards 2011

In 2011 FoeBuD awarded Facebook with the BigBrotherAwards.

You can read the (english) laudatio or watch the video (german).

This is the short version:

The BigBrotherAward 2011 in the “Communication” category goes to Facebook Deutschland GmbH for systematically poking its nose into people and their relationships, behind the friendly facade of an ostensibly free service. Facebook stores the collected data in the US – access by secret services enabled, deletion disabled. Via its “friend finder” and “mobile app”, Facebook also grabs hold of email addresses and phone numbers from its users’ address books. The “Like” button on external websites, even if it is not clicked, betrays all page visitors to Facebook. With Facebook, a kind of “gated community” is sprawling across the net in which people are monitored every step of the way. It is governed by the whims of a corporation that is earning billions with systematic privacy violations.