I’m not terribly homesick for New York most of the time, but I admit to missing New York Comic Con quite a bit. It was always a blast. This year, those in attendance received a special surprise: Social network updates they’d never actually made.
First reported by Polygon and brought to our attention by Jonah Weiland of Comic Book Resources. Major industry journalists found their Twitter and Facebook feeds with such phantom posts as “#NYCC 2013 I love you!” The culprit appeared to be the convention’s new, RFID-enabled badges. NYCC took to Facebook this morning to address the event and apologize. Sort of.
There’s a whole lot to take issue with in the above. For one thing, how mealy-mouthed is that “on behalf of attendees” line? The con was tweeting on the con’s behalf; there was no favor of any kind being done here. Then, there’s the “apologize for the perceived overstep” line, which is the equivalent of saying “I’m sorry you were offended.” The implication is that NYCC staff are sorry you got upset, but not for their actions. Stay classy, Comic Con.
As for the opt in, how is it that no one was aware of what they were opting in to? Yes, I know plenty of people click “OK” without reading the permissions on an app or something, but this isn’t an app. Something else has to be going on here.
Comic Con doesn’t get all the blame though. People need to learn not to give their social network credentials to anyone. Don’t sign into random sites via Twitter or Facebook, even. Social networking is how you present yourself to the world, so don’t risk that for even an instant.
A problem is that NYCC got account access when people signed up for the RFID tracking in the ID badges. And it was extremely unclear that this tracking was optional — badges came with giant stickers urging people to register and the NYCC website kept pushing registration.