

How Facebook is Turning Your Likes Into Ads - brevityness
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/technology/so-much-for-sharing-his-like.html?ref=technology

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dm8
I'd be mortified if any of the ads contain my face. I don't mind ads. But its
getting little too far with adding my face as an endorser. Like the guy who is
mentioned in this article; I may share items out of amusements but that
doesn't mean I endorse that product. And if anyone from my family sees them
(who still don't differentiate between ads on Google search, let alone FB)
then I'd be in trouble. Especially, if products like lubes etc.

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damian2000
So a bot is recycling your comments and pushing them as ads to people in your
network. As someone who doesn't use Facebook, this seems totally screwed, and
has put me off using it even more.

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mrjasonroy
The exact thing happened to me, I shared the same story from Boing Boing and
my friends told me what happened:

[http://mrjasonroy.com/blog/2012/02/23/problem-facebook-
spons...](http://mrjasonroy.com/blog/2012/02/23/problem-facebook-sponsored-
stories/)

And, lately, there have been a a bunch of ads from "whitetruffle" that have
had my picture and freaked me out.

Spooking me out is not a good way to sell me things.

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doug1001
For those who didn't click through to the NYT article: a guy is surfing on
Amazon, sees a product for sale, a 55-gallon drum of 'personal' lubricant
(which might be the smallest size they sell at Costco), clicked the "like"
button and wrote a funny comment. Next thing you know....

This is actually an exemplar of a FB _Sponsored Story_ , which i believe was
introduced via the Ads API not too long ago.

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tsurantino
Does this make anyone worry that Facebook's reaching for some really desperate
(and scary) ideas of generating ad revenue/recognition?

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freshnote
Maybe it's because I often use Facebook on behalf of retail businesses and
consumer brands, but I've found Facebook's disregard for privacy unnerving for
years now? And you haven't?

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tsurantino
I'd rather not generalize this as Facebook's war on privacy moreso on the fact
that, Facebook _has_ a problem with generating ad revenue and this feature
doesn't really make sense.

