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Facebook Lets Advertisers Use Pictures Without Permission
Krokz sends in an LA Times piece that begins "A warning is bouncing through cyberspace today, landing on the Facebook statuses of many of the social networking site's users. The message: 'Facebook has agreed to let third party advertisers use your posted pictures without your permission.' It continues with a prescription of how you can protect your photos." The attention-grabbing incident in this furor involved a married woman, whose photo appeared in an ad for a dating service that was presented to her husband to view. Fortunately, both husband and wife had a sense of humor about it.
It seems at this point like Facebook's plan was to make itself an indispensable part of millions of people's lives and then abuse them like this because they know most users still won't quit.
Man who continually stands in the middle of the road is hit by a car. Seriously, what are these people expecting when they sign up to a site like Facebook?
unless facebook has you sign a proper model release form, i can't see how this kind of use is going to hold up.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
The parent comment - not mine ;-)
Computer Science is all about trying to find the right wrench to bang in the right screw. -T.Cumbo?
What Mark Zuckerberg really means is:
We have banned the third party applications responsible for exploiting the privacy of our userbase, because we reserve the right to exploit their privacy OURSELVES".
After all, there IS an option for this in the user settings, so its eems pretty clear that they either already do something similar or intend to in the future. The response from facebook is nothing more than Apple kicking an application out of their iphone app store, because they want to introduce their own version of it and make the money for themselves.
So please Facebook, just put all the creative commons license choices on there, and the problem is solved
As usual with Facebook controversies, you can very easily opt out of this and never have your photo used by an advertiser.
You can't just assume you have permission - any contract like this must be opt in.
And of course, Facebook is not mandatory, it's something that you choose to be part of.
What if the terms are changed retroactively, to photos you already uploaded?
What if you're not on Facebook and someone uploads a photo of you, that then gets used in an advert?
And of course, why in hell do so many people post illegal or embarrassing items to a fairly public and insecure site?
Off-topic. There are plenty of photos I might not mind being visible to a restricted set of people (Facebook photos don't have to be "public" FYI), but would mind being in an advertising campaign. In fact, even if I was okay with a photo being entirely public, doesn't mean I want it in an advertising campaign.
(This assumes that the story is true - if it isn't, then there's nothing to worry over anyway.)
Okay. This is "better" in the sense that it is not Facebook itself exploiting user pictures. But it's still bothersome on some level. In particular it's bothersome that Facebook's default privacy rules make this possible. It seems that enabling an application gives that application near-limitless access to a person's account. It's all well and good that Facebook's policies forbid this, and that they've retroactively done something about it. But why was the access there in the first place?
I do think users need to take some responsibility. They should be more careful about the text and photos they upload to some company's servers, and the applications they enable. But still it seems that Facebook is way too permissive with privacy and security settings, and that they are continually pushing the boundaries of what's acceptable with respect to advertising. For instance, why is it that when you go: SETTINGS > PRIVACY SETTINGS > NEWS FEEDS AND WALL, the "Appearance in Facebook Ads" is by default enabled. You need to manually turn it off. Yes it's up to users to manage their privacy settings, but having users continually being opted-in to these kinds of things (without any particular announcement, that I'm aware of) smacks of "let's see what we can get away with--and apologize only if we have to...".
What if someone else posts a picture in which you are present? Odds are that you have been to a family or social gathering at which someone has a camera, and has later uploaded the photographs. Avoid Facebook all you like, but if friends and family use it you are likely to end up on there whether you like it or not.
> What if someone else posts a picture in which you are present?
What if the New York Times puts a photo with you in it on their front page? The photographer owns the copyright.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Actually the stupid approach is the one so many have taken -- posting all their personal photos and data online. I have never and will never do such a thing. And since most of my family and all of my friends have more sense than to do such a thing, I have no real cause to be concerned.
Duh!
:)
Caveat Utilitor
Before you start googling around, remember that once you see it, you can't unsee it.
"However," replied the universe, "The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation."
Wow.. way to rake in the Karma there :-P.
Help I'm a rock.
Mine was opted-in by default. I never changed it. I didn't even know it existed. And I don't use applications so none of those changed it.
The biggest reason that facebook et al need to be pursued on this, is not just the theft of image but, far more importantly the theft of your honesty and integrity. By using your image, they are implying that you approve of and recommend the product that your image is attached to. It is very much a theft of who you are. So not a copyright infringement but a fraudulent misrepresentation, it really is one of the worst 'marketing' abuses I have ever come across.
That facebook would stoop this low is a real warning to users or more accurately as it turns out, the used of facebook, time to shift locations, things are bound to get worse as try push to monetise - 'you'.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
"What is your photo doing on an on-line dating site?"
"Honey. What ate you doing looking through on-line dating sites?"
Have gnu, will travel.
You see advertisements? Why aren't you using adblock like the rest of us?
Until this whole ordeal, I didn't even realize Facebook *had* ads.
I believe the defaults should be set to the most private setting, and allow users to SHARE their stuff. Facebook does it the other way round, they say all your stuff is public unless you specifically disallow it. How is that fair? Its an open abuse of people's right to privacy, and for the (hopefully brief) time between the change and when the user realises and updates their privacy settings, facebook has had a field day with your personal details.
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.