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Facebook’s Price For Power puts users at center of political scandal

The latest Facebook Connect campaign inserts users into the narrative of the Starz drama, Boss

 

Lindsey Weber

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Posted on Jul 25, 2012   Updated on Jun 2, 2021, 1:55 pm CDT

A new Facebook Connect campaign puts users at the center of a political scandal.

Called Price For Power, the campaign collects your information and playfully places it into the context of Boss, a television drama by Starz.

In the video narrative, your face shows up on the local news, labeled as a corrupt government official. Then watch as your friends start to turn on you, sending you emails with the subject reading, “WTF!!!!!!!”

Actor Kelsey Grammar, as his character Mayor Tom Kane, then asks, “Do you realize how easy it would be to have you completely wiped off the map?” Your friend list is then shown quickly disintegrating.

Price For Power is the latest in a trend of entertaining (albeit short-lived) Facebook Connect initiatives. 2011’s Take This Lollipop used the service to gather photos and specific information to make up a video that revealed a creepy man browsing through your Facebook profile. The same Connect technology was also involved in Intel’s Museum of Me, which created a montage of photos from a user’s Facebook albums.

According to brandchannel, with Take This Lollipop the “…information gathered from a viewer’s Facebook profile by the film’s app is used once, and then deleted.”

When it comes to other Facebook Connect projects, especially ones created by brands—where the gathering of demographics and information is in the forefront—there’s no telling what happens to that ‘connection’ after you watch the charming video.

For example, Toyota’s “Your Other You” (which is now taken down) attempted to collect information and use it to play pranks on peoples’ friends, which backfired when a judge ruled that Toyota could be sued for punking a woman into a nervous breakdown.

Perhaps that personal information is the real price for power Facebook users have to pay here.

(Don’t want to give your own information and just watch me be corrupt? Go for it.)

Photo via Facebook

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*First Published: Jul 25, 2012, 4:39 pm CDT