This afternoon Facebook posted an update to their blog regarding the viral note circulating around the web about third-party ad networks. According to their post, the company is concerned about the user experience and so far they have shut down two ad networks (as we have previously written) and have forced some ad networks to remove the deceptive ads previously in question. The most important component of their blog post is as follows:
The advertisements that started these rumors were not from Facebook but placed within applications by third parties. Those ads violated our policies by misusing profile photos, and we already required the removal of those deceptive ads from third-party applications before this rumor began spreading.
We are as concerned as many of you are about any potential threat to your experience on Facebook and the protection of your privacy. That’s why we prohibit ads on Facebook Platform that cause a bad user experience, are misleading, or otherwise violate our policies. Along with removing ads, we’ve recently prohibited two entire advertising networks from providing services to applications on Facebook Platform because they were not compliant with our policies and failed to correct their practices.
While the post clearly explains how Facebook attempts to monitor the platform, there is no clarification as to their policy about how third-party ad networks use your images in advertisements. As I’ve written twice already, modifying your ad settings (as described in the original download squad article and the viral note spreading around Facebook) will not remove your photos from third party ad networks.
While Facebook is clearly concerned about the users’ experience with their platform, the company is in a challenging position of determining how to manage this issue. Preventing ad networks from using user images all together will be an overly aggressive action. Extending the privacy settings so that third-party ad networks are forced to check the privacy setting when displaying an ad is costly to Facebook in terms of development and costly to ad networks in terms of ad display processing overhead.
Right now Facebook has a terms of service in place that should protect users (including limitations on data caching, and limits on how ads are displayed). You can read more about the company’s ad guidelines here. One thing that doesn’t appear to be listed in the terms is how user images can be used in advertisements.
I’ll have to do some more digging to see if there is any clarification of that anywhere in the terms. So far I have not found any clarification and as far as I’m aware, third-party ad networks currently don’t have restrictions on which friends are displayed in ads. I’ve reached out to Facebook for clarification and am waiting to hear back.
Update
I’ve spoken to Facebook and they’ve made some relatively strong statements, the most important of which was that ad networks “need permission from the owner of whatever photo they use.” That means unless an ad network asked for permission to use your image, they can’t use it. Additionally, here are the policies that are applicable according to Facebook:
- The data section of the platform guidelines indicates that just because a developer gets access to user data doesn’t mean that they can use it
- Developers are not allowed to pass user data they get from FB to ad networks.
- Apps cannot break the law, and there are rights of publicity issues that come into play here. Facebook is granted permission in the terms to use a user’s photo in an ad but this permission does not extend to developers or ad networks.
- Not doing anything misleading (indicating a user has taken a quiz when they haven’t is misleading)
The only question I have now is when did any ad network on the Facebook platform ever ask for permission to use my photo or anybody else’s?
Update 2
As I recall from over a year ago, the main loophole in this system is that the majority of users’ photos are publicly accessible via Google. That means ad networks have the capacity to view some of your friends and their photos via crawling the public version Facebook.
So is this post/note that I have received valid? I've been passing it on to my friends as well:
FACEBOOK has agreed to let a third party advertisers use your posted pictures WITHOUT your permission. Click on SETTINGS up at the top where you see the Log out link. Select Privacy. Then select NEWSFEEDS and WALL. Next select the tab that reads FACEBOOK ADS. There is a drop down box, select NO ONE. Then SAVE your changes. (REPOST to let your friends know!)
Comment by Yesi Hill — July 24, 2009 @ 2:26 pm
Any inkling as to who the two banned networks are?
Comment by Stephen Wade — July 24, 2009 @ 6:28 pm
I thought this was the clarification from them:
How We Use Photos
We’ve run advertisements from our own advertising system for more than a year that let your friends know if you have a direct connection with a product or service, in the same way that your friends learn through your News Feed if you’re connected with another friend or an organization’s Facebook Page. For example, if one of your friends becomes a fan of a Page, you may see an ad, like the one below, with your friend’s profile photo that indicates the action that friend has taken.
Comment by Steven Alejandro — July 24, 2009 @ 6:39 pm
The best part is the comments on the articles that read like this:
“Steven A Smith
I think this is a lie, I found my pic on a seperate site wanting me to take an IQ test. But what are ya gonna do. . . . nothing.”
Everyone, time to put on your tinfoil hats and start the conspiracy theories!
Comment by Facebook User — July 24, 2009 @ 6:40 pm
The ad networks they have banned ask the applications for their secret key, they make an API call on behalf of the application it fetches their friends and their information. These ad networks broke the rules in several different ways, which is why they are now banned.
Comment by Francis Pelland — July 24, 2009 @ 7:01 pm
good on you for researching this privacy issue, revealing the lies re privacy setings and letting everyone know. Keep up the good work!
Comment by Kia — July 24, 2009 @ 7:27 pm
It would be nice if Face were as concerned with other matters! It would be nice to have a contact email address with them. I have been banned from posting on my wall accused of violating FB wall when infact all I have done is answered my friends comments. I thought that was what Facebook was about ~ making friends across the world!! I do not post spam, I am not abusive but I have been abused by Facebook ~ But I guess that’s ok!!!!!!!!
Comment by Marion Bridger — July 24, 2009 @ 9:25 pm
This seems like common sense to me, not sure why facebook doesn't see that. No one should be able to use our photos, but us. Plain and simple. It is illegal to upload a photo w/o consent regardless of what website or app you are using so why does facebook think they are exempt from this? In a previous quote, they actually had the audacity to say "to revamp the site would cost a significant amount of money to correct". Sorry, but not my problem. They should have thought of this to begin with. They should do a better job of protecting their loyal users.
Comment by NAT — July 25, 2009 @ 3:28 am
This whole panic about using pics is really annoying to me for several reasons. 1) It's taken out of context and no one – not one person who is spreading the viral seems to have read the fine print before signing up with FB
2) The info in this viral rumor isn't true. Not true! It's a half-truth and more like a game of "telephone" via viral.
This is the deal – that setting that everyone says to change to: "choose no one",do you see the other choice? Yes! It says your friends! If you don't want to network with your friends or their fan pages, or want your pics tagged by your friends, by all means "choose no one".
Here is another fact most people don't know: If you have ever sent your mother (or close friend) a pic of yourself via email and called the pic your own name (ie: john.jpg) – go Google that right now. You will more than likely see that pic on the Google search in the "images" catagory. Google has been doing this since the inception of their network. Facebook, to work in conjunction with Google ("invite your friends from your gmail account") they MUST have this disclaimer for legal reasons. Everyone just read into it that it meant something else. Do a little research people!
Lastly, I don't mean to sound rude, but what is everyone afraid of? It's like some paranoid delusion that you're face or image is going to be chosen for something or some ad. Most likely, no. Maybe if you take a beautiful pic of a sunset and send it to someone – someone else may use it for their desktop pic.
If you're afraid of the internet, don't use it. If you're using the internet, do research before sending pics. Don't send any pics that would do harm to yourself. Don't email your credit card number. Don't read a piece of info, do no research and then spread a rumor that could potentially hurt businesses on FB! Yes, that rumor has caused harm to us that run ads for our fan pages. Now, many will not post pics to them fearing … what??? They don't really know and that's the problem.
Comment by Lisa — July 26, 2009 @ 9:09 am
On-line privacy is a big deal to me…it's too easy to be taken advantage of…and…many Facebook users are minors who cannot give permission for their images to be used. If the privacy settings don't provide privacy, then I'm uncertain if I want to continue to use Facebook at all.
Comment by Pat — July 26, 2009 @ 10:14 am
"This is the deal – that setting that everyone says to change to: “choose no one”,do you see the other choice? Yes! It says your friends! If you don’t want to network with your friends or their fan pages, or want your pics tagged by your friends, by all means “choose no one”. "
Lisa – I think you have misunderstood the issue. When one checks "no one" it isn't that you will no longer network with your friends, it means you will no longer allow your image to be used by 3rd party advertisers. Have you ever seen the ads on some apps that say that your friends have taken an IQ test and got certain scores? Of course, they haven't actually taken the test, but some people get fooled into believing that they have. This is what FB is trying to stop.
Furthermore, I have a have a question for you. Do you have children? I do. And if I want to post a pic of my daughter for MY FRIENDS ONLY TO SEE, I don't even want to THINK that some creep may download and masturbate to it. To make light of folks who want to keep their privacy relatively intact while enjoying the internet IS rude.
Comment by QZ — July 26, 2009 @ 2:26 pm
For Lisa:
It's not a case of being paranoid. The pictures we use as avatars belong to us. They are copyrighted and as such, cannot be used by ANYONE on the internet for any purpose unless we waive copyright. We do that in a limited way in the Facebook agreement but it does NOT extend to third party advertisers. They are stealing images in order to make money. It is illegal and I would like to see Facebook take a stronger stand on this issue.
Comment by Angie Mohr — July 27, 2009 @ 7:56 am
I thought Facebook had cleaned up the mess with this one, but I've just stumpled upon an ad, that's using one of my (male) friends picture with the text: "Hey Hans, Do you think Sune is hot?"
The ad is in an iframe from rockyou.com – i've shortened it here: http://bit.ly/eg1Pv
Why aren't they shutting these ads down ASAP?
This may very well turn into a huge problem for Facebook.
Comment by Hans Peter Nielsen — July 27, 2009 @ 10:04 am
The sad part is many of the applications we used on facebook have us push that little blue box allowing the application to use our data.
Many of these applications are linked to advertisers like socialcash and others. So when we gave that quiz or game permission it doesn't seem anything was stopping them. I mean we clicked the button that says "Allow" and had the following disclaimer: "Allowing [APPLICATION NAME] access will let it access your Profile information, photos, your friends' info and other content that it requires to work."
Comment by J. Garner — July 29, 2009 @ 4:54 pm