Facebook Courts Trouble

Facebook is courting controversy again says the search marketing team at clickmate by letting advertisers use people’s profile pictures and information in their advertisements.

And there’s no compensation to the user. This is a reversal of their privacy rules which is likely to anger many users and some regulatory authorities.

The changes go live today and come hot on the heels of a legal settlement which said that Facebook had to cough up $20 million to compensate those members’ pictures and names who had been used by commercial entities.

The rules had been clear. Users had the option of using their privacy settings to keep their own content away from advertisers. Now it’s all change with a line that now says: “…you give us permission to use your name, profile picture, content, and information in connection with commercial, sponsored, or related content.”

This means that users’ content can be used free of charge, expect in certain situations.

Facebook explained that the changes are designed to: “…further explain how we may use your name, profile picture, content and information.”

A spokesperson went onto say: “As part of this proposed update, we revised our explanation of how things like your name, profile picture and content may be used in connection with ads or commercial content to make it clear that you are granting Facebook permission for this use when you use our services…We have not changed our ads practices or policies – we only made things clearer for people who use our service.”

This is likely to enrage users and smacks of a similar attempt by Instagram to do much the same sort of thing. That was met by a backlash from users and ultimately failed.