Earlier this year, I wrote several posts about Facebook’s crappy terms of service (specifically the portion of their terms related to photo licensing). Shortly after I blogged about it, Facebook’s terms made national news and there was quite a bit of discussion.
Amongst those who thought I was making a big deal out of nothing, one of the consistent themes was that although the terms of service allowed for Facebook to use your photos for any purposes including advertising, they wouldn’t really do that, would they?
When I gave a talk at Ignite Portland surrounding this topic, I commented that people probably wouldn’t want their photos to be used for a dating service (in the video of my talk below, I make that comment if you start watching at 4:40). Guess what: Facebook is now doing just that. You can opt out, but the default setting on Facebook allows them to use your photos as advertisements to meet “Hot Singles in Your Area”. Lovely.
Ignite Portland 5 – Aaron Hockley – About terms & conditions from David Abramowski on Vimeo.
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I have opted out and still saw my profile in an advert for some genius crap test
Thanks to all the great comments on my blog and elsewhere, I’ve learned that these ads aren’t actual Facebook ads. Instead, they’re third party app ads (likely culprit – dumb quizzes), which may in fact be a violation of Facebook’s Terms of Service http://www.facebook.com/terms.php
See Number 9 – Special Provisions applicable to Developers/Operators of Applications and Websites. The way I read it, their use of my photo is a violation.
What do you think?
While I don’t doubt that there are third party ads that may be masquerading as Facebook ads, the fact that there is an official Facebook preference to control using photos in ads (and that the default option is to allow such usage) indicates to me that Facebook definitely plans to use user photos for advertising.
Reminds me of the Friends episode where Joey’s modeling photos were used for an STD campaign on the side of buses in NYC.