Apparently there’s no escape from Facebook’s Social Web

Like it or not, opt-out or not, Facebook will deliver a social web.

I have my Facebook account locked down fairly well with very few details open to the public (my website and Email) and I of course followed my own instructions on how to properly opt out of Facebook’s “Instant Personalization” settings. Or so I thought.

Even though I have opted out and set up restrictive privacy settings as seen to the left, visiting http://www.facebook.com/cormyn will allow you to view my entire friend’s list, and show you all products, apps, music and games that I am a fan of, or have selected that I like. Honestly, I could care less that the world can see that I like Jason Mraz or Sara Bareilles, they’re both excellent musicians. And I’m certain that nobody is going to lose any sleep knowing that I’m a die-hard Dr Pepper fan or that I play some of Zynga’s games on Facebook.

However, despite my efforts to follow Facebook’s instructions to opt out of Instant Personalization, I visited CNN.com this morning to read a news article about a tweet I read a few minutes ago, and saw the following:

Upon clicking an article, I also saw this at the top right of the screen and also at the bottom of the article I was reading:

This is definitely something that concerns me. Not only is the front page of CNN showing me messages about one of my Facebook friends, it’s also aware of the fact that none of my 300-something friends on Facebook have “recommended” the article on their Facebook pages, and suggests I get the scoop and be the first of my friends to do so.

Seriously, Facebook? I’ve opted out, I’ve blocked the three partner sites, yet there are still other sites out there, implementing your “like” button for your grandiose “social web” scheme, and my information and web browsing will be made known to you just because I happen to be logged into Facebook?

That’s right, folks: as soon as I’ve logged out of Facebook, CNN fails to show any of the text/graphics which I show in the screenshots above.

I will admit, the web developer in me is amazed because I know the effort and technology that goes into building something like this. At the same time, if the only way I can NOT see this information is to log out of Facebook, then perhaps I will reserve a separate browser for my Facebook activity, and use my primary browser choice (Google Chrome) for the rest of the web.

Either that, or I need to see if AdBlock has a rule implemented that blocks Facebook’s iframe on every other web site. That’d be convenient.