The following Facebook story is actually two stories that broke yesterday and today.

Story One- Facebook Privacy Settings Push

Over on RRW, they have the story on Facebook pushing its members to be more open and visible on the site.

Of course Facebook has said the new settings in your privacy tab are to simplify options for everyone and protect you. It’s hard to believe that when the new settings are to make your page,pictures and posting visible to everyone on the net.

This is what we were greeted with this evening when we logged in:

Now don’t panic. Just make sure you keep all settings marked as “Old Settings”. This is where your previous privacy setting you marked are.

Worryingly, anyone who has not edited the old default privacy settings when they signed up to Facebook will automatically be moved to Public settings.

Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt told Reuters today that Facebook was recommending that posts be viewable to everyone because such sharing of information is consistent with “the way the world is moving.” But as the largest social network in the world, isn’t it Facebook that effects these kinds of changes?

Story Two- Lobbying group paying users to send a letter opposing health-care reform legislation.

Business Insider broke the following story that is still to be confirmed.

A CEO of Gaming site OMGPOP spotted the following screen on one of their games:

Why is this on a game page? Well on Facebook, game companies can offer the gamers three ways to obtain items and in-game cash to progress in addictive games.

• Just play the game alot.
• Buy upgrades, new items and in-game cash with real world money.
• Accept third party “offers”

Now third party offers are where the above letter comes in.

Mostly a third party offer will have you sign up for their service. The gaming company gets money, the third party company gets you and more hits to its site.

Now this appears to be what the anti-reform group “Get Health Reform Right” are after.

Gamers get extra cash and “Get Health Reform Right”  get an army pushing their agenda.

According to Dan Porter (Ceo of OMGPOP) the company responsible for bringing game companies and third parties together is Gambit.

Dan Porter tells us(Business Insider) it’s most likely the case that Get Health Care Reform agreed to pay an ad agency for every letter-writer it recruited. Dan supposes it was this third-party that bundled the above survey with several others and submitted it into Gambit’s offer network.

Noah Kagan, Ceo of Gambit said : “It’s not that Dan is wrong. But we don’t run hot political issues. You don’t have any evidence that this is from Gambit. We don’t condone this in our system. Sometimes stuff does happen, but we’ve been very proactive in making sure that there’s not negative offers in our system.”

So it seems the health insurance industry is trying to fight against President Obama’s health care reform bill using very dirty tactics.

You can read a fairly simple overview on that bill HERE.