Your Facebook Posts Will Now Help Determine TV Ratings

In this digital age, companies that have been around for decades have to re-think the way they do business. Nielsen is one of those companies that has to change with the times, in order to stay relevant. But you may not like the changes that they're making.

For some time now, the TV ratings company has been monitoring Twitter, in order to get a better idea of what people are watching. That's not terribly worrisome, as everything on Twitter is viewable by the public. However, now it seems that they've tapped Facebook as their next platform to monitor.

The company will be collecting data that includes "posts shared with friends, family and publicly." This does imply that even when you choose not to share posts with the public at large (restricting it to only friends and family) that it will still be collected. Thankfully, this does not extend to private messages.

Yes, it's private and anonymous, but at the same time, it still feels a bit creepy. If you choose to not make a post public, then one would hope that it would not be used in any manner by another company. However, that does not appear to be the case.

Edit: The article was updated to remove references to Facebook Messenger conversations, which are not a part of the information gathered or reported to Nielsen.

VIA: Nielsen