UPDATE: Are You Facebook's Ad Poster Child? Exploring Acceptable Use
According to Download Squad, four days ago Cheryl Smith's picture appeared next to a Facebook ad targeted towards her husband. The copy was not only inaccurate, but a little disturbing, "Hey Peter, Hot singles are waiting for you." As far as we know the Smiths are not into kinky role play and Facebook has not built an amazing new relationship compatibility algorithm. In actuality, Cheryl is the unfortunate victim of the fact that Facebook Facebook's 3rd party application developers have used our mugs to advertise to our friends.
Smith offered the following directions on how to change your photo settings in her blog. She suggests going to Settings >> Privacy >> News Feed and Wall >> Facebook Ads and then making sure "No one" is selected.
This is not the first time this week that individuals have seen their social media-related identities hijacked for advertising purposes. Crunchgear recently reported a slew of tweets linking to phishing sites. Essentially a bot account has been pushing out fake retweets from celebrities in the hopes that loyal fans will see the RT@aplusk's and RT@oprah's and make the mistake of clicking through.
While on the one hand it's incredibly flattering that your endorsement of a product might actually influence others' beliefs and attitudes. It's probably best to monitor your identities to ensure that your good reputation remains in tact. And if you don't mind endorsing products in your profiles, you might as well get paid for it through a service like Magpie or Izea.
UPDATE: After publishing this article, we received a note from Facebook representative Annie Ta saying, "Basically, any ads you currently see doing this are coming from third-party ad networks and are only running within the canvas page of an application, which is controlled by third party developers rather than Facebook. We constantly review our policies to ensure that these third-party ads meet the expectations we have for user experience."
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"We constantly review our policies to ensure that these third-party ads meet the expectations we have for user experience"
I guess Facebook is saying that they approve of this useage.
So does that mean that there's no way to turn this off since the ads aren't in the newsfeed and wall section?
The perfect illustration of why I don't use Facebook.
Unlike their apparently flexible interpretation of the words "Privacy Policy", my own avoids misunderstanding - I don't join ANY site that asks for personal information.
Once you give it, you have no control over where it goes or what it will be used for, as the above example makes quite clear.
If, like me, you run a business online, the greatest asset that you have is your good name. There's no way I'm prepared to allow mine to be used as an endorsement of goods or services I don't approve of - nor do I want to find I'm recommending my competitors.
There's nothing Facebook can offer me that would make up for that.
Wow! How brazen. It really surprises me that Facebook is being so clueless after the Beacon debacle and after the Facebook Bill of Rights circus. Thanks for the tip on how to turn this off! But FB really seems to be acting in bad faith to sneak this "feature" in without informing people in plain language. Very tacky.
Interestingly, when I went to change my privacy settings, there is no longer an "Appearance in Facebook Ads" option on the Facebook Ads tab. The tab is still there, but there are no options. What does this mean?
I'll put in an email and find out. A spokeswoman emailed to talk about the ads being 3rd party application ads; however, she didn't lay out any plans about how other ad efforts would be dealt with in the TOS. I'll see if she's got some answers. Thanks.
Since my original post, thanks to the many comments on my blog and elsewhere, I’ve learned that the issue is not with Facebook. The culprit is a third-party app developer - likely the quiz app. Nonetheless, changing the settings as described below, is still a good idea for most people.
You have to do it with Internet Explorer. It is not there with Firefox.
I have also found that. Facebook Ads is really impressive way to market any content and product online on facebook. Nice info. Thanks for sharing
It's there fine in Firefox. You may have Adblock or some other ad blocking software enabled. Turn it off and presto.
I would also note that this very page has tracking enabled for: Google Analytics, Crazy Egg, Statcounter, Crowd Science, Federated Media, OpenAds, AddThis, Facebook Connect, Twitter Badge, and Enquisite. I'm not alleging anything sinister, just pointing out that things that might, according to your personal definition, be thought of as infringing your privacy are all over the place. If you're paranoid about such things, the Ghostery Firefix extension is eye-opening.