The New Facebook Ads - Another Privacy Debacle?

privacyprof writes "Facebook recently announced a new advertising scheme called 'Social Ads.' Instead of using celebrities to hawk products, it will use pictures of Facebook users. Facebook might be entering into another privacy debacle. The site assumes that if people rate products highly or write good things about a product then they consent to being used in an advertisement for it. Facebook doesn't understand that privacy amounts to much more than keeping secrets — it involves controlling accessibility to personal data. 'The use of a person's name or image in an advertisement without that person's consent might constitute a violation of the appropriation of name or likeness tort. According to the Restatement (Second) of Torts 652C: "One who appropriates to his own use or benefit the name or likeness of another is subject to liability to the other for invasion of his privacy."'"

Ya

[moogied (1175879)]

Man nothing would be worse then ad's targetting me on a website where I put my full name, school, work, a list of friends, a list of likes and fears, and pictures of myself.

Those bastards.

Re:

[Brian Gordon (987471)]

Come on social network users, you know what you were getting into when you filled out all of those boxes.. don't tell me it didn't cross your mind that companies would pay billions for that data.

Re:Ya

[Mrs. Grundy (680212)]

I don't think you get what is going on here. It is not targeting ads to you. It is targeting ads to others using you as an unpaid spokesperson without your direct consent (or consent in the small print of the TOS). In the example on the facebook site, a person who liked the movie 'Top Gun' has their image being used to advertise Blockbuster. I'd be pretty pissed to find my face on a Blockbuster or Walmart ad just because I liked a product that one of these companies wants to sell. I think it is all pretty unseemly.

Facebook is public

[Harmonious Botch (921977)]

The site assumes that if people rate products highly or write good things about a product then they consent to being used in an advertisement for it.

No. The site assumes that if you post something about a product where the whole world can see it, then you consent to being used in an ad. Which seems quite reasonable to me. ( As an example, by writing this post on slashdot, I am implicitly giving the whole world permission to say "H Botch says that the above quote is stupid".)

Re:Facebook is public

[cybermage (112274)]

The site assumes that if you post something about a product where the whole world can see it, then you consent to being used in an ad.

That's an assumption that will get them sued. There are laws and legal precedence about using people's likenesses without their consent. Just because you say you like a product or service in public it does not give anyone the right to use that as a commercial endorsement of the product or service. If it were so, you'd see celebrities constantly hounded to give their opinions on products hoping to use their response in advertising.

Re:Facebook is public

[ericrost (1049312)]

They have consent.

http://www.facebook.com/terms.php [facebook.com]

Re:Facebook is public

[dnormant (806535)]

More specifically (from your link)

"When you post User Content to the Site, you authorize and direct us to make such copies thereof as we deem necessary in order to facilitate the posting and storage of the User Content on the Site. By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content."

Re:

[Storlek (860226)]

No, it's really more akin to saying "H Botch thinks the above quote is stupid, oh and buy our product so we can get more money."

I don't use Facebook, but I'd personally object much more to the fact that they're making money off of my picture (and not forwarding one thin dime of the profit onto me) than that people are using my picture for anything.

Re:

[NickCatal (865805)]

But it is even more controlled than that. It is more to advertise to your friends saying "Hey, your friend Nick just did xyz and said abc about it" rather than "Here is this random guy named Nick and he just did xyz and said abc about it"

Which makes a lot of sense to me as both a consumer and as a possible advertiser. ESPECIALLY if I am advertising my local company or service. (Nick just used Moe's Dry Cleaning, where you can get your clothes dry cleaned for a low price.")

Public != free for commercial use

[coyote-san (38515)]

You are wrong. This isn't a question of whether people are seen in public, it's whether their image (and statements) are being used for commercial purposes. Advertising is, by definition, a commercial purpose. With very few exceptions (e.g., legitimate news coverage) you have to get written permission before you can use anyone's likeness or words for commercial purposes.

For an analogy, go to a stock photo site that accepts pictures from the public, e.g., iStockPhoto. They really drive home the fact that

Facebook is != public

[GodInHell (258915)]

No, Facebook is NOT public - the default is limited access - which you may ramp up fruther. Unless you are on my friends list all you can see is my name and the picture I choose for my face. If you ARE my friend, you can see all my pictures, my e-mail and phone, my likes, my hates, and the fact that I induldge my brother by commuting zombiecide with him occasionally, and a fairly spotty account of what I've been up to for the last two years.

I am not willing to make that information public - but I want my f

Sounds Familiar

[mastershake_phd (1050150)]

Sounds a lot like the case when Virgin Mobile used a photo of a person from Flickr that was uploaded under "an Attribution Licence, which the Creative Commons website explains, will let others copy, distribute and display your photo and derivative works based upon it, provided they give credit the way you request."

http://www.out-law.com/page-8494 [out-law.com]

Re:

[sammy baby (14909)]

(IANAL)

I think you're a bit off on this one. In the Flickr / Virgin Mobile case, the problem revolves around whether the photo had the appropriate attribution. Copyright over the image was never in question.

In this case, the question is who owns the content of that review. If I post a positive review of something on a site, with a picture of me, do I retain the copyright over my review? And just as importantly, can my image be considered part of the review? If Facebook owns the copyright, and the image of t

Nope

[mbessey (304651)]

In the Flickr / Virgin Mobile case, the problem revolves around whether the photo had the appropriate attribution.

Actually, in the Virgin Mobile case, the issue at hand is that they didn't have a model release for the person in the picture. The picture was properly attributed.

It's well-established in the law (they even cited the code in the Slashdot summary) that you need someone's explicit permission to use their likeness for commercial purposes. Just having the photographer's permission isn't enough. How

Would them uploading their pictures

[Liquidrage (640463)]

to facebook, combined with some legal mumbo jumbo, potentially give facebook the right to use those pictures?


You agree to let facebook use any pictures uploaded for yadda yadda yadda...
*I agree*

Hey, no fair! You're using my picture.

I really don't see this as similar to, say, me going around and taking pictures of people and using them without consent.

Re:

[kebes (861706)]

To give a more extreme example, if Facebook decided to use people's profile pictures, and Photoshop their heads on the bodies of naked people... would that be okay? Probably not. No amount of EULA mumb-jumbo or implied consent would make that legally permissible, both because of the particular laws that apply to things like modeling (especially adult modeling) and because any court would agree that this exceeded a "reasonable expectation" of the rights the user was granting to Facebook.

Now, in the case o

Definition of privacy

[elwinc (663074)]

Post is 100% right. The definition of privacy is control of personal information. Secrecy is one means of control, but not the only one. Things like the "do not call" list are implementations of privacy by other means; i.e. they have your personal information, but you can still prevent them from using it by calling. Credit card and bank account info are also private: you give your CC# to a vendor and the vendor is only allowed to use it for the purpose of that transaction. Facebook apparently fails to appreciate the distiction between privacy and secrecy. They need to understand the magnitude of their error.

Users Choose

[rueger (210566)]

I find the Facebook privacy stories frustrating because they seem to always ignore one thing - in almost every case the Facebook user decides how much information to make public, to whom, and which applications to install.

Facebook actually does a pretty good job of giving users control over their information and arguably is transparent about the ways that it may be used. That's more than a lot of e-commerce sites can claim, and in an age of spam-bots and the like probably commendable.

And ultimately it is optional, you have to choose to sign up.

Re:

[Anonymous Brave Guy (457657)]

I find the Facebook privacy stories frustrating because they seem to always ignore one thing - in almost every case the Facebook user decides how much information to make public, to whom, and which applications to install.

Sorry, but that's just not true [slashdot.org].

Re:

[telbij (465356)]

Your cited post says nothing to contradict the grandparent. Facebook offers impressive privacy controls, and they work better than anything else out there. The fact that they don't offer fine-grained control in one particular area, or they release a new feature that uses information in new ways the user didn't expect, doesn't mean their privacy controls are bogus. Bottom line is there are a lot privacy puritans who will see any kind of personal information database as a conspiratorial slippers slope, but

Not necessarily

[MMaestro (585010)]

I'll admit I'm a Facebook user but I've NEVER submitted my photo (or any other photo) to Facebook simply because I'm too lazy and use it too infreqently to care. That said, there are at LEAST a dozen photos of me on that site, none of which I gave permission to anyone to post. You can't realistically expect people to monitor sites like Facebook just to protect their privacy.

Re:

[bkr1_2k (237627)]

Asking your friends to remove your picture should be a simple process. Monitoring facebook might seem like an unreasonable expectation to uphold your privacy but monitoring your friends shouldn't be.

Re:

[keithjr (1091829)]

in almost every case the Facebook user decides how much information to make public, to whom, and which applications to install.

Were you around when they first introduced the Facebook Feed? For those who don't use Facebook, this the system that functioned a lot like an RSS feed, broadcasting changes in all your friends' profiles to you when they happen. And, of course, vice versa. It was rolled out without warning and just started working on day, to many people's surprise.

Despite that fact that all

They can add that consent clause to their TOS

[madhatter256 (443326)]

Facebook, and its owner can simply put that consent for these ads into their Terms of Service agreement for new and existing users. Simple as that.

Ahem, from the terms of use:

[ericrost (1049312)]

"When you post User Content to the Site, you authorize and direct us to make such copies thereof as we deem necessary in order to facilitate the posting and storage of the User Content on the Site. By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content."

So, you gave them permission, good luck fighting it.

Suckers.

Re:

[Liquidrage (640463)]

Good job. That's what I was wondering a few posts up from yours and just was too lazy to go look up their ToS.
This doesn't seem like a privacy issue. It seems like a "you're using their service for free issue. Deal with it or leave" issue.

Seems like the same people that complain about this are the same types that cry freedom of speech when posting stupid crap on a private forum.

Re:

[ericrost (1049312)]

Yeah, I PROBABLY should have just responded to your post, but I didn't want it buried down in replies since it was a salient point to the whole conversation :)

Re:

[WinterSolstice (223271)]

The terms above are clear, but there are still gray areas to this. I think it will expose them to a lawsuit.

Content may be too vague, and the terms do not read like a model consent form at all. I expect it will get its day in court :)

Re:Ahem, from the terms of use:

[saterdaies (842986)]

Not quite. So, my friend Amy posts a picture of the two of us on Facebook as her profile picture. She has given Facebook a license to that photo. That's what the agreement stipulates. First, if Amy didn't take the photo, she might not own the rights to it and Facebook could be sued for copyright infringement. Yeah, they have that clause saying that you warrant that you have the rights to post it, but that simply won't hold up if they're sublicensing it. Sites can't be sued for what their users post, but then if they start sublicensing it in an intentional manner, it gets a lot more blurry. Second, and this one is a lot more air tight, the agreement does NOT include a clause granting endorsement rights. As the original post said, that is very different from copyright rights. Amy might own the copyright on many pictures of me. She does NOT have the right to license my image and likeness for the purposes of endorsement. She has the right to post the picture and even to give Facebook the right to use the image how they see fit as long as it isn't considered using the image/likeness as an advertisement or the like.

Re:

[Registered Coward v2 (447531)]

Another thought:

You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content."

As soon as you see your content being used for advertising, you can remove it and thereby automatically revoke Facebook's right to use it. that could be a logistical nightmare; and why would any company open themselevs up to a suit simply becasue t

This is fine

[jonnythan (79727)]

You rate a product there, you are providing Facebook with your opinion of the product. You agree to let Facebook use this opinion any way they want. You've also agreed to let Facebook use the pictures you've uploaded.

This conforms just fine with the user agreements. If you don't like it, don't use Facebook.

Sad, very sad....

[zappepcs (820751)]

This story going public may be the first introduction to the phrase "online privacy" and its associated menagerie for most FaceBook users.

New TOU?

[davidsyes (765062)]

There probably ought to be a new Terms of Usage suit to demand that users who favorably rate or rank products get discounts. There should be a system to verify the tracking previously mentioned to ensure that those who case a favorable uptick in product sales GET those discounts for sales they caused.

There BETTER be an at-will re-rate/de-rate option, too, so that if one initially favorably rates a product and then later experiences an problem can re-rate or de-rate the product, AND still keep their discount

Once again, not as simple as it seems.

[Petey_Alchemist (711672)]

Thanks kneejerkers for more of the same old "READ THE TOS DOOFUS".

If you actually read the TOS, you'd see this:

"When you post User Content to the Site, you authorize and direct us to make such copies thereof as we deem necessary in order to facilitate the posting and storage of the User Content on the Site. By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content."

Now, there's stuff in there about Facebook copying your content for storage. There's stuff in there about letting Facebook perform, display, or translate your content. There's even stuff in there about letting Facebook use your content to promote *Facebook*.

But can anyone in there see any sort of language that says Facebook can use your content to promote other products?

Read it carefully. I don't think there is such language, and I think there might actually be a case for misappropriation here.

Re:

[Petey_Alchemist (711672)]

Someone said earlier that you're just letting Facebook use your opinion as information--that you just let Facebook know that you like, say, an iPod, and then Facebook posts something that say "John Doe likes the iPod!", and then it's fine, because Facebook isn't promoting Apple, they're just rebroadcasting the information you've posted to the site.

If that's the case, fine. I just hope that A) the rebroadcast is not labeled "Advertisment", and B) that Apple is not paying for the slot, because otherwise that'

It's Not The Privacy, Stupid!

[Nom du Keyboard (633989)]

It's not the privacy part, Stupid! I already put my picture out there. I want to be PAID when you make money off of my image. It's as simple as that!

Re:As long as the users don't care...

[Donniedarkness (895066)]

Most facebook users I know don't really care about any "attention" they may get through the site. They use it to easily send messages to friends and keep in touch with people from their old high schools (I live on a college campus).

Yes, you sometimes see people with crazy pictures, but there are very few of those, from what I've seen.

Re:

[ShieldW0lf (601553)]

I would go so far as to say that such referrals and recommendations, coupled with the capacity to gauge the character of those recommending, is all the advertising the world needs.

If the scheme were fully transparent and held by a not-for-profit group, instead of privately held and administered behind closed doors, this would be great.

Privacy is overrated. We should ditch it.

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

Privacy is overrated. We should ditch it.

You feel free to ditch your own privacy if you like. But don't you FUCKING DARE force everyone else to do the same.

Re:

[YrWrstNtmr (564987)]

Personally I'm of the camp that we should embrace the transparent society. At least that way there's some equity.

Ok, let's go for it.
You first.

And what if they start caring? Or about ex-users?

[Anonymous Brave Guy (457657)]

Facebook are quite happy to collect information on anyone who has ever been a user, including identifying them in photographs, even if they closed their account immediately after discovering that the site is one big invasion of privacy. Facebook offer no mechanism for ex-users to permanently delete such information, nor to prevent others continuing to provide it after a user cancels their account (despite the fact that this is almost certainly illegal in many jurisdictions).

So what next? Anyone whose frie

Re:And what if they start caring? Or about ex-user

[darjen (879890)]

So I guess posting your opinions on Google and Facebook and a host of other topics on Slashdot is more secure? Do you not think that anyone could look at the IP address that you posted from and find out anything they want about you?

I don't know, a lot of people value communication with friends. I know I do, and I've been able to reconnect with some old friends on Facebook and Myspace that otherwise I wouldn't have been able to contact.

In other words...

[nunyadambinness (1181813)]

"It's exactly why I am the guy who quit Facebook almost as soon as I'd joined it."

You didn't do your research, and want to complain about it after the fact while taking no personal responsibility.

"Privacy" does not mean "free from the consequences of bad decisions". You are (I assume) an adult. Try acting like one and protecting your privacy instead of assuming someone else will.

Re:

[BobMcD (601576)]

"Privacy" does not mean "free from the consequences of bad decisions". You are (I assume) an adult. Try acting like one and protecting your privacy instead of assuming someone else will.

Is anyone else getting tired of these same old binary arguments? I may have unlocked the secret to quantum thought, but I doubt it. Surely you guys can do it also:

What is quoted above is, in fact, true. Unfortunately the truth of it does nothing to negate the truth of the following statement, as they are not mutually exclusive:

"Being in public setting" does not mean "willing to be raped at every turn." You are (I assume) a citizen protected by a body of law. Try acting like one and asserting your right

Re:And what if they start caring? Or about ex-user

[telbij (465356)]

Give me a break. If you deactivate your account, all your information is deleted. You're complaining that if someone tags you in a photo, that tag still exists? Well, first, I'm not so sure that's true. It would be pretty sloppy engineering since the user account doesn't exist and so the link would go nowhere. And second, anyone can post anything about you anywhere, that doesn't make it someone else's responsibility.

Don't like what your friends are posting about you? Take it up with them!

Re:

[edmicman (830206)]

So you basically blackmailed your friend until he caved in and used a website that he didn't want to use? Nice. What he should have done is told every one of you to fuck off, pissed on your beds, and found new "friends".

Re:

[Anonymous Brave Guy (457657)]

I had a friend, too. In order to cause some general amusement, his best friend eventually just created an account for him... filled with hilarious "details" and pictures about his life. This persisted for a month until he eventually found out about it and that many of his other friends were in on the joke.

It caused the break up of a long-standing friendship, which has never recovered, and put strain on several other relationships affect by the "funny" content and the betrayal of trust.

See, the problem i

Re:As long as the users don't care...

[epee1221 (873140)]

As long as facebook refrains from using pictures of users that have restricted accounts, I could see this being a bonus for particularly attention seeking users.

As I understand it, these ads will be displayed by the news feed page, which aggregates information from your friends' recent activity. Only people's friends would be able to see them in ads.

Re:

[telbij (465356)]

Same as any other website since the beginning of time. The user is responsible for what they do.

Re:

[masterzora (871343)]

You did it wrong anyway.

Who is driving?
Oh my god bear is driving! How can that be?