Facebook made my teenager into an ad
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Why are your kids there? In your own words, it's a professional risk, den of commercialism, not to mention the inevitable psychological damage from refreshing a webpage instead of having actual social interactions. And it's not even hip any more.
And the case you're linking to does not involve impersonation. Finally, you can set up an account and never use it so they have nothing to snoop on or use.
You are ignoring the reality of network effects. My friends will post photos that include me on Facebook whether I have an account with them or not. My friends will coordinate activities with one another via the group chat and event invitation facilities, including location metadata and description context whether I participate in the discussion or not.
Whether you have the choice to give Facebook data about you is increasingly out of your hands.
Privacy controls were changing.
Posting to groups is slightly trickier than it needs to be. (I only ever post photos to public or to a single group, but selecting that group takes a couple of clicks).
While I can agree that these problems are not exclusive to Facebook I am far more likely to have the problem on Facebook than other networks because of the sheer size of the FB userbase.
No, that behavior has existed since newspapers started printing pictures. You touch on your real problem with Facebook, and that is its size. That's it.
There's the saying, "Quantity has a quality all its own." Turning a thing from an "occasionally" into an "always" can effectively change the nature of the thing entirely.
That's the internet's responsibility.
What, before Facebook you never showed up in your friends' photo album? Or your friends just never let anyone see their photo album? Because I know neither of those were true for me.
So rather than speak to your friends about photos that you are in you would prefer hackers to takedown Facebook and for your friends to lose all their photos and other content...
If you're concerned don't let people take pictures of you. If you are as concerned as you sound don't leave the house. People can take your picture in public and do what they like with it. This is only going to happen more and more as cameras get smaller and put in more places.
"Don't leave the house haw haw" is not a valid response to objections to Facebook's unethical operations.
My point was that this is nothing to do with Facebook. If you go out in public people can take your picture and they can put it on any website they wish. They can publish it in print media too. Facebook preventing you from taking down any photo you appear in isn't unusual - it seems like the best option they have. If group photos started disappearing from my account because one of my friends who voluntarily appeared in them was paranoid I'd be pissed off. For a lot of people that's the only copy of the photo they have. To Facebook it's a choice between pissing off users and satisfying the paranoid who don't even use Facebook. Seems like a simple choice to me.
sounds like exactly the kind of attitude that
>> I basically have no option of recourse, because there's a revised culture thanks to Facebook which tells me it's outside of my hands now.
is complaining about.
I have friends who have asked exactly this of me. Being a friend, I took the photos down.
IANAL but isn't it illegal (grounds for a lawsuit at least) to use the image of someone, who is too young to provide legal consent, in an advertisement without their legal guardian's express written consent?
I could have swore that was a thing on a higher than state level but maybe I'm wrong? Like I didn't think you could make a 'settlement' and then legally avoid this sort of thing in the future.
Isn't this quote all sorts of legally indefensible? When did non-adults ever have the ability to 'represent' anything in the absence of their guardian?
any user under 18 “represents” that her parent agrees to let Facebook use her image in ads.
In the article they list the states that it is illegal in. This is presumably a federal case that doesn't take that into account.
> Facebook can’t buy our children, and it can’t sell them either.
Yes, slavery, because that’s exactly what’s at stake…
> But 10-year-olds still need supervision.
Not sure I need to point out that they have nothing to do on Facebook in the first place, or that humanising young corporation in a way to disparage the ability of their (very mature) executives to make decisions is lame. You are not Mark Zuckerberg’s, or Sheryl Sandberg’s mother — stop thinking that because you are someone’s mother, you are always right on all matters; otherwise, I'll have to point you to how the authors’ of Freakonomics have truckloads (litterally) of hatemail proving that being a parent… doesn’t exactly make you reasonable in general.
I'll pass the “my child is so smart” because… well, with a mother like you, I can only hope that she is, and focus on a simple thing: someone as opinionated as a hippie teenager can be probably never ‘Liked’ big corporate brand on Facebook, yet, they are apparently listed as such.
That is a purely technical problem, that has nothing to do with parental consent and kids’ agency, about how much control Facebook users have over their listed ‘Likes’. I wouldn’t sue Facebook, because, well, they have good lawyers and your narrow-minded hysterionics and over-helicoptering seems to have ruined the patience of every judge available. I’d go with the announcers, telling them that they are advertising to the wrong crowds because of technical glitches. But that's just me.
The issue (to me) really seems to be that a company is using images they do not own, that depict people's children (who cannot legally consent to their pictures being used or any other contract), for their own profit.
Regardless of if this is Facebook or anyone else it seems like there is an issue with the company claiming the right to use other peoples images for advertisements.
I seem to remember a big flap about Instagram claiming they own the rights to peoples photos in the recent past. In this case it seems like there is the additional issue of the photos picturing people's children.
Edit: I understand putting the text "so and so Likes this company" next to something if they actually 'liked' it. But the article implies that they are using the person's image in a custom advertisement in the feed.
[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2013/01/21/faceboo...
Too many times I have searched something on Google and then later on in FB low and behold I see an ad whiz by on my timeline pertaining to what I searched earlier on Google.
Taking this to the extreme, if my teenage son searched for Condems on Google and then later see’s the AD on FB and clicks like, do I want the AD to appear with my sons pic endorsing this product?
Which would inevitably lead to the call from them to me letting me know what my son is up to which then leads me to explain a bunch of non transparent FB rules to non technical people.
How? What is it to publicly announce that you like something? That's an endorsement. Why else would you be "liking" something on FB? To privately remind yourself that you like it?
I'll happily bash facebook all day. But before you allow your children onto the Internet you really really need to decide about what you think is acceptable, and talk to them about it.
Do not arrange to meet in real life anyone you do not know in real life without talking to me first; do not take photographs of your unclothed body and for god's sake do not send those photographs to people.
Everything we have, every tool we use, every byte we distribute over the internet relies on that global supply chain. Abstract concepts do not abuse workers.
please explain your disdain
Obviously false.
Bill Gates? Jay Z? Zuckerberg? There are so many people on the Forbes Billionaires List who are self-made.
Yes, it could be worse but that doesn't meant they're not being exploited and the issue shouldn't be brought up and examined for improvement.
1. http://gokicker.com/2013/04/25/how-sweatshop-conditions-kill... ...even in America.
2. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2096551/Apple-shamed...
>>Workers are continuing to die and sustain injuries in horrific accidents as they are forced to work from morning to night for slave wages in sweatshop conditions.
Now tell me more about how disingenuous I am.... http://i.imgur.com/eu0AZF9.png
So her 14 year old daughter has a fully qualified, informed opinion of the global suppy chain, how it came into being, and what it affects, and she wants you to respect that.
Heh, really? Are we talking about the same Zuckerberg who got his start making webapps by having people rate illegitimately-gained pictures of his peers? ("The Kirkland dormitory facebook is open on my desktop and some of these people have pretty horrendiedous facebook pics. I almost want to put some of these faces next to pictures of some farm animals and have people vote on which is more attractive."). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facemash#Facemash
Or the guy who called people who submitted information to his site "dumb fucks"? (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg).
This latest move is exactly the quintessential spirit of the Zuck. But honestly, I'm expecting a lot more to come as the secret comes out that they can't make a lot of money (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag) -- I think they'll sell private information of users to insurance companies.
Usage of users' photos in ads should be opt-in to begin with. Prior to this "new normal" people were normally compensated for appearing in ads, according to a contract.
The surface area of all the ways that Facebook decides to use you and your data is beyond most people's ability to correctly understand, let alone the ability of minors. And then they take and use the right to unilaterally change the terms any time they wish, opt you back in to things you repeatedly opted out of, etc.
The sooner we stop making special excuses for Facebook's pervasive, intentional, greedy misconduct, the better. It's not like it's impossible to do profitable business without making it a policy to act like a total scumbag.
The amount of work required to put in such a system would also be prohibitive, since most countries would have seperate systems, and each one of these would need to be accounted for. It'd raise barrier of entry for sites, since along with other infrastructure, they'd need to set up complex identification rules (granted, after some time there will be libraries for that. still, it's another step they have to take).
It'd be a soggy mess to set up something like that.
This is not the case, nor is it normal. Facebook tested naming friends (not making anyone appear) in recommendations: there was no new information revealed (you can see your friend's Likes at all time on their page); Facebook tested displaying relevant information in different ways. They similarly name common friends when someone you don't know comments on a thread you have taken part of. Some of the content on Facebook is paid for: some by me, as an individual, to promote important information about myself; some by corporate entities. In one, unsuccessful, test Facebook tried to associate friends that where also fans with paid-for targeted recommendation.
If you want to be compensated for your image appearing on Facebook ads, I know agencies that enroll model: I’d be happy to refer you. I'm sure they'll pay you as usual.
> For other legal purposes it is not enough to say "but the 13-year-old said she was 18" so it is interesting that this is enough for Facebook.
Facebook is very clear in their enrollment process that they need their users to be trustworthy in their statement; it has to do with the cost of the service. I have seen so much grief over Facebook actually checking your identity after an ID theft, that I can't imagine the amount butt-hurt over them checking the age of underage teenagers, from parents like OP, teenagers who lied and are most likely going to rationalise that out of the park, and more importantly you.