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."'"

Sounds Familiar

[mastershake_phd]

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]

Users Choose

[rueger]

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.

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

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

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 friends group has ever mentioned a product on someone's wall is consenting to to any image of them tagged in a photograph by someone else without their knowledge being used in advertising? Anyone who once mentioned something privately to their friends in order to criticise it gets their face used to promote that thing to the world?

There is just no excuse for this. It's exactly why I am the guy who quit Facebook almost as soon as I'd joined it. Facebook, like Google, is one of the biggest dangers to modern society. Society just hasn't realised it yet, and lets them get away with stuff because they present the appearance of a useful service. Pandora's box ought to be required reading in schools.

Re:Would them uploading their pictures

[kebes]

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 of this ad situation, I'll admit it's a bit less clear, but similar logic applies. There are special laws when it comes to endorsement, advertising, and commercial use of a person's likeness. Moreover, I think most courts would agree that this exceeds the "reasonable expectation" of what rights the user was granting when they signed onto Facebook.

I don't think this is an idea Facebook should pursue (unless it is explicitly opt-in), because doing it without permission opens the door to a class-action lawsuit. No amount of legalese in a click-through agreement can over-ride the common sense of a judge who can plainly see that people didn't intend for this to happen when they signed up for the service.

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

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

[xZgf6xHx2uhoAj9D]

How do you propose to do that? I'm with the OP: a transparent society [wikipedia.org] is inevitable. Privacy as a natural phenomenon can't really exist; it's a purely social phenomenon. The further we progress, the harder it is to enforce. We can continue to ask for the illusion of privacy, and give more power to those who are too dishonest to respect privacy. Personally I'm of the camp that we should embrace the transparent society. At least that way there's some equity.

Re:Users Choose

[telbij]

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 Facebook has done a pretty good job so far.

If you think about it from the perspective of someone who likes the idea of social networking, but doesn't want it to be a crazy fucking free for all like MySpace, then Facebook is actually a pretty decent service. Let's not sound the bullhorns until they do something a little more obviously wrong. I think we have greater privacy in todays world than Facebook.

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

[Captain Splendid]

I've been reading your anti-privacy posts for a while now. I hope to god you're trolling.

Re:Users Choose

[keithjr]

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 of that information is readily available if people browse each others' profiles. But, the idea that all of their activity was being broadcast, without filter, to everybody on their Friends list horrified a great many people. It became a bit of a debacle, paranoid college kids calling it "Stalkerbook." Shortly after the rollout, the Facebook team added Privacy controls to limit what appears on said Feed, and issued a public apology.

So Facebook actually has a pretty bad track record when it comes to giving the user choice. This latest move is another example of their blatant disregard for their user base; implementing a money-grabbing feature without properly addressing the users' wishes.