14 DAY TRIAL // Rumors have been spreading this week across Facebook, but also in news outlets, that the social network had changed its policies to allow third-party advertisers to use Facebook users' photos in campaigns on the site without their express permission. The rumors started when Cheryl Smith, a business consultant, posted on her blog about a curious “hot singles” ad, which her husband received while on Facebook, showing her picture. Now Facebook has stepped up to address the rumors and accusations stating that there was no change in the policies and that the advertiser had actually violated the social network's policy and had since then been removed along with the offending ad.
“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,” Barry Schnitt, Facebook policy manager, wrote on the company's blog. “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.”
In fact, policies that allow advertisers to add a user's photo in their ads, but only if the user made actions to indicate a connection with the brand or organization that is advertising, have been around for quite a while now and have been used in some targeted ads campaigns with varying degrees of success. However, the incident that started the whole controversy was a violation of those policies as the third-party ad network that delivered the ad used photos that had no connection with the service being advertised.
Still, Facebook's new push towards more openness, while understandable from its perspective, is bound to create more incidents like this and the social network has to thread very carefully especially after years of being one of the most closed services online.