Have you used Facebook to give a shout-out to businesses you like? Best make sure your profile picture catches your best side, because you might be an unwitting star in those businesses' next Facebook ad campaigns.
In November 2007, the Palo Alto, California-based social network announced a highly targeted advertising platform, called Facebook Ads, at a splashy media event in New York. Since the platform's release, most of the focus has been on a feature called Beacon, which informs people in your Facebook network about what you're doing on affiliated third-party sites. For example, if you buy tickets to a new flick on Fandango, your buddies will find out which movie you saw through a line in their Facebook news feed. Privacy advocates, lead by political organization MoveOn.org, cried foul, leading Facebook to curtail its Beacon program and add the ability to opt out of the service.
Almost overlooked in the Beacon hubbub were the new display advertisements dubbed "Social Ads." These ads, bought by participating businesses, insert your name and profile picture directly into their pitches. Based on anecdotal evidence, the ads started to roll out right before the holidays.
According to Facebook, a user has to take a "social action" in order to trigger the appearance of their name and picture in an advertisement.
According to Facebook spokesperson Brandee Barker, that could be almost any activity that the user does on Facebook, "such as the download of an application and the acceptance of a friend request." It could also include becoming a "fan" of a business by clicking a link on that company's Facebook page.
But are Facebook users aware of the results of their so-called social actions? "When you become a fan of Blockbuster, nothing tells the [Facebook member] what that means," says Jeremiah Owyang, senior analyst at Forrester Research. Indeed, when you add Blockbuster's Movie
Clique application, there is no notification that you are allowing
Blockbuster to use your name and profile picture in a display ad.
Owyang suggests that Facebook ought to inform users up front and make it very clear what "becoming a fan" entails, or change the system to an opt-in model. Currently, there is not even any way to opt-out of participation in Social Ads, other than by avoiding associating yourself with any corporate brands on Facebook.
According to University of Minnesota law professor William McGeveran, who wrote extensively about Social Ads' possible legal ramifications when the platform was announced, the problem is that users may be unwittingly lending their likenesses to advertising campaigns. "I would expect it to make many users uncomfortable to see their images appropriated this way for commercial purposes if they didn't have warning and didn't give true consent in advance," McGeveran told Wired.
It's also possible that Social Ads may run afoul of legal statutes, like Roberson v. Rochester Folding Box Company, a 1902 case in which a flour company used a picture of a teenaged girl, without her permission, to promote their product. However, McGeveran says it's too early to tell whether this precedent would apply to
Facebook. "Social Ads [are] a little different from [Roberson v.
Rochester], because, rather than being plucked out of thin air, [a
Facebook user] did do something to initiate the ads. The question is if that something constituted consent. Facebook thinks it does and I think that it is, at the very least, debatable."
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