
Facebook made my teenager into an ad - cl8ton
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/15/facebook-advertising-opt-in-privacy-issues
======
spindritf
I can offer an instantly effective alternative to "someone needs to supervise
the social network," stop using it. The terrible tyranny of facebook has to be
the epitome of first world problems.

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.

~~~
omegaworks
>stop using it

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.

~~~
selmnoo
Speaking as someone whose pictures ended up on Facebook (without me even
having a Facebook account), I can't even begin to describe how frustrated I
feel about this. 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. I can't request my peers to take down group photos that include me (or
even photos with only me) because I'd sound like a dick if I did. For this
reason I really hope that some black hats, upon finding some 0days or
something, just do something to bring this behemoth down. So please, when you
find something, don't disclose vulnerabilities to FB, disclose them to dark
corners of the blackhats' residences.

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> " I can't request my peers to take down group photos that include me (or
even photos with only me) because I'd sound like a dick if I did. For this
reason I really hope that some black hats, upon finding some 0days or
something, just do something to bring this behemoth down. So please, when you
find something, don't disclose vulnerabilities to FB, disclose them to dark
corners of the blackhats' residences."

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.

~~~
pekk
No way to stop Facebook's unethical operations.

"Don't leave the house haw haw" is not a valid response to objections to
Facebook's unethical operations.

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> ""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.

------
ItendToDisagree
Question:

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._

~~~
dec0dedab0de
_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?_

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.

~~~
thinkcomp
Here's the In Re: Facebook Privacy Litigation docket:

[http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/index.html?id=1782789](http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/index.html?id=1782789)

------
bertil
This article reaks of helicopter parenting, with all the usual over-blown
statements that make talking about targeted advertising so hard to explain:

> 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.

~~~
ItendToDisagree
Why all the name calling? The issue may not be all about corp hating hippy
helicopter moms but something more important to everyone.

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.

~~~
bertil
Why the name calling? Because, given Facebook size, it should be addressed
with calm and enough technical skillset — and because nothing gets on my
nerves more than the “I'm a mum, therefore I'm right” argument. Having a
vagina does not make anyone a specialist on gender issues (unlike what far too
many people think), education and obviously not social networking policies.

~~~
DanBC
Spit the hook. You got trolled hard by a bit of click bait in the shitty
opinion section of an otherwise good newspaper.

------
grannyg00se
When you "like" something you are telling Facebook that you want your social
network to know that you like that thing. Doesn't it make sense that Facebook
would then go about telling people that you said you liked it? That's the
whole point of clicking the like button.

~~~
cl8ton
‘Like’ing something on FB is entirely different that endorsing a product for
your friends, which is what the AD makes it appear.

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?

~~~
kalleboo
Why the heck would your son press like on a condom ad?

~~~
cl8ton
It was an extreme example hopefully it wouldn’t happen, BUT if it did at least
his G’ma, G’pa, aunts, uncles and cousins who are friends with him would at
least know his choice of condoms.

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.

------
DanBC
> A generation of ‘opt-in’ kids is being exploited, and someone needs to
> supervise the social network

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.

~~~
pekk
Why not both? It is both true that Facebook does many very unethical things,
and that you should talk to your kids.

------
jsmith0295
"the global supply chain that exploits workers" can we please stop
perpetuating that ridiculous myth, in the countries in which sweat shops
exist, they are generally far better options for laborers than the
alternatives.

~~~
krisdol
Exactly! The few rich people who bought up all the land and placed foreign-
owned sweatshops on it are doing the workers a favor. Sure, many goods
produced there are priced way out of the range of what the workers could ever
dream of affording, but what the locals have lost in terms of self-sustainable
living has been more than made up for by the pleasantries of factory towns,
jobs for every man, woman, and child, and living quarters with meals for
purchase on site, making it easy for children to fulfill the labor
requirements they were contracted for as adolescents. And since capitalism has
priced every other option but starvation and crime out of reach, sweatshops
certainly appear to be good options for wage slaves.

~~~
philwelch
Yes, this is exactly what every country which ever had sweatshops looks like.
It's not like England, or the United States, or South Korea ever developed a
middle class capable of buying the kinds of products being manufactured in
their sweatshops. Capitalism only reinforced existing class divides, which is
why the preindustrial nobility are still the only rich people in the world.

~~~
nlp
"Which is why the preindustrial nobility are still the only rich people in the
world"

Obviously false.

Bill Gates? Jay Z? Zuckerberg? There are so many people on the Forbes
Billionaires List who are self-made.

~~~
philwelch
Um, that's my point.

------
mavhc
Why do you care? So what if your face is on an ad? Only idiots would believe
you had anything to do with that happening, and why would you care what idiots
think?

~~~
dinkumthinkum
I'm not sure if you understood the complaint ... I'm not sure anyone is weird
that someone will think that someone else will think their child endorsed a
product ... The issue is about their child's image being used at all.

~~~
mavhc
But why does that matter, if it's not actually affecting anything? It's not
like they printed 10 metre high adverts with their face on and put them up
around town. All that happens is people you know on facebook see your photo
next to an ad and think "ha, stupid facebook, that doesn't fool me"

~~~
dinkumthinkum
Sure, but you not want your child's image used for those purposes. Seems
reasonable to me. I think you're focusing on whether Facebook can fool anyone,
which is besides the point.

------
fedor91
Maybe the law isn't the most important thing here. I think that Facebook has
to act like a grown up and think in an ethical way about this. It's just
immoral to use children their images in adds. And I don't think that this fits
Zuckerbergs original intentions when he started Facebook.

~~~
selmnoo
> It's just immoral to use children their images in adds. And I don't think
> that this fits Zuckerbergs original intentions when he started Facebook.

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](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](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](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag))
-- I think they'll sell private information of users to insurance companies.

~~~
philwelch
Because obviously Zuckerberg is personally choosing which profile picture to
use in advertisements.

