I think the issue here is not much about privacy, but about your image being associated with a product without your prior consent(for each product), and for free.. when they do this, you become the product together with the thing you are endorsing..
To make this more clear, imagine you signup for a new cable television channel, and you watching it, suddenly your image shows up with a product in your hands, smiling, and saying: "This is the best product i ever used", and you realize that its being broadcasted to everybody watching it.. would you fell comfortable about that?
Once we settle down for this kind of things, and think its normal, we are contributing to a world where we are constantly sold as a product; and that my friend completely diminish the human nature.. its a slow and erosive dead of humanity (in the confucian sense of it)..
All values we give importance today as freedom, truth.. will lose more and more value, and the only thing valuable in society will be money..
I know it may look like a exacerbation, but this is a systemic process, going on from several front lines.. and that one is one of them..
This is not much about privacy implications (despite it has some too), but more in a ethical degree.. and the failure to detect it properly can have severe consequences to us all in the long term
As I said below, I've opted out (I was already opted out, actually, but I also don't write reviews with my name in the first place), but my only real problem with this is the +1s part of it.
I have no problem with quoting a review that you wrote with your name and face associated and putting your name and face next to it for your friends to see. For context, see the ads that appear at the top of yelp search results. They usually quote someone's review and have their profile picture next to it, which is fine, because all they're saying is "here's a good review someone gave of this place", and using a review that was intended for people to see publicly. The person didn't "become an ad", their review was just quoted in an ad with their public profile picture next to it.
I have more of a problem with the +1 thing, but it's theoretical right now, and will come down to how they actually execute it. It's the same problem as the ambiguity of the "like" endorsements on Facebook. A +1 on a restaurant is probably fine to show (in the same way as with reviews), as long as they say something like "magicalist +1-ed this restaurant!". If, however, I +1 a cool photo that Red Bull posted about Felix Baumgartner's skydive, for instance, and my friends start getting ads saying "magicalist +1-ed Red Bull!", then we're in false statement territory, since that is not at all what I meant.
+1s (and "likes") are inherently ambiguous (which aspect of the thing I'm +1-ing am I approving of? It's often not all aspects), so they really should tread carefully. The rest I don't really have a problem with.
Yeah this is the issue. If you click to "endorse" one thing and then all of a sudden that's generalised to a whole range of other stuff from the same brand, vendor, organisation etc. it can be very misleading. Also there are often incentives given for "likes" (eg. a competition) or you might "like" something as a favour to someone and then all of a sudden ads show up saying how much you like the ANZ bank which makes you look like a bit of a spazz.
This said, you can't opt out of being featured on search results. If you +1 a webpage, it will show up more in friends' search results when relevant, and your name and face will appear under it with your endorsement. That's not going to change. All the opt-out does is stop this same placement from occurring when an advertiser is relevant -- it stops your face from appearing in Google's ads, formerly known as sponsored links.
I don't mind appearing in search results, as that's just useful to others. But ads, by definition, are less relevant to a search result than the search results themselves. I don't want my recommendation appearing where a sponsor dictates. That said, I personally wouldn't mind as much if Google was paying me and shared the stats on when my face showed up ;-) (Wouldn't that change the nature of Google+ though...)
The ads are the tribute we "pay" as users of free services that are convenient and useful for us in some way..
Theres nothing wrong with the model in itself, it works, it make some things free for us..
The review model you have pointed out, is a ok model i think.. because there's social benefit for all users involved.. this is much more a "facebook like model".. and that can be done because its up to you and your own choices to sponsor some idea, a place or a product if you wish..
But the proposed model will not depend on you, or your will.. and thats what's bad about it.. its just disrespectful.. and we are talking about the possible customers of the sponsored services and products..
But if they really need to do that, at least they should share the profits with the people being exposed to do that..
That way people would consciently participate of this process(by choosing to opt-in and not to opt-out)..
The other thing that is pretty disrespectful and make people anger about, is the fact that people would automatically get into this advert model thing and to choose to opt out of it.. so people that dont even know wahts happening will have their faces and privacy exposed, and maybe look to their friends that they wish to do it...
The correct way to do that would be create this, and invite people to opt in.. if they wish.. this show that the company, whoever they are respect the user of its service..
Otherwise the message looks like: "You use our free services therefore we own you"
I dont care if its google, facebook, microsoft or apple.. i know that things dont used to be like this.. things are getting scary with time.. in a way we wonder what sort of transformation are happening to them? they used to have such a cool services.. and they were profitable in the same way..
Somewhere over the rainbow, they lose their track.. its time to get back to its own roots, before its too late
To make this more clear, imagine you signup for a new cable television channel, and you watching it, suddenly your image shows up with a product in your hands, smiling, and saying: "This is the best product i ever used", and you realize that its being broadcasted to everybody watching it.. would you fell comfortable about that?
Once we settle down for this kind of things, and think its normal, we are contributing to a world where we are constantly sold as a product; and that my friend completely diminish the human nature.. its a slow and erosive dead of humanity (in the confucian sense of it)..
All values we give importance today as freedom, truth.. will lose more and more value, and the only thing valuable in society will be money..
I know it may look like a exacerbation, but this is a systemic process, going on from several front lines.. and that one is one of them..
This is not much about privacy implications (despite it has some too), but more in a ethical degree.. and the failure to detect it properly can have severe consequences to us all in the long term