

Why Does Facebook Hate This Woman? - DanielBMarkham
http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2011/04/why-does-facebo.php

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ig1
I don't think Facebook hate small advertisers, I think they do (1) Care about
ad quality (2) Care about short term gain.

Facebook have really made a big drive to get rid of affiliate rebills, etc. as
Facebook users view them as scams and they end up damaging Facebook's
reputation.

From my experience if you have a legitimate business it's unlikely that FB are
going to reject your ads. Facebook want your money, the only reason they'll
not want your money is if the ads will cost them more reputational damage then
the money they bring in.

I think their drive for short term gains has led them to some decisions which
are damaging to small businesses (CPC pricing, no frequency capping), but
thinking "they're out to get you" is just simple paranoia in my opinion.

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ig1
The site you were advertising looks like a health scam site (not saying that
it is; just that's what it looks like on first impression), did Facebook
specifically reject your ad on the basis of your image or due to the nature of
your site? (i.e were other ads with the exact same details approved)

~~~
DanielBMarkham
It was specifically rejected because of the image. "...The image included in
your ad is not suitable to appear on Facebook..."

~~~
ig1
Interesting. A lot of advertisers have been complaining about ad cloning for a
while, where companies clone the adverts from their competitors. I wonder if
Facebook have introduced some sort of automated filter to reject clone images,
etc. or if they're just manually rejecting the ones that have been vastly
overused.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
On my blog fan page (visible from the site), I post funny pictures several
times a day -- it's a habit I got into months ago.

I've found lately that if I pick up a funny pic from the web, sometimes FB
recognizes it and won't take it. But if I shave it some -- change the
dimensions -- then it goes through okay.

So yes, there is something going on there.

~~~
ig1
I guess it's a copyright detection thing then.

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tokenadult
I see from a link via RiderOfGiraffes

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1737491>

that TinEye has been discussed here on HN plenty of times before. I have
recently been using TinEye

<http://www.tineye.com/>

to trace the provenance of images I see on the Web. (I learned about TinEye,
in fact, from an MIT alumnus who was wondering about whether a Facebook ad
image was computer-generated or a photograph of an actual person. The image is
a photograph of a famous model.) Whatever exactly it is that Facebook is doing
to enforce its policies, it plainly has technical means for identifying images
that duplicate other images, and then some set of policies for resolving
doubts in doubtful cases into decisions about whether or not an advertiser can
use a particular image. Just stay within the rules, and all should be okay.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Yep, TinEye was used here, as indicated in the comments over on the blog.

Didn't help for this particular person, and I got four emails this morning all
claiming she was a different person.

It's a great tool. Highly recommended. Anybody posting images should use it.

The problem is what to do when you get a negative result. If Facebook wants to
start requiring paperwork for every little 160 x 120 ad image that's fine with
me: I'm a photographer and would love taking a weekend and shooting some
stuff. But I'm not sure that a negative result on a Google or TinEye search is
indicative that copyrights are being violated. If it is, there's a hell of a
lot of material on the web (and Facebook) that needs to be removed. As
indicated in the article, it's not whatever the rules are or aren't: it's the
selective enforcement that can drive folks nuts.

~~~
JeremyBanks
> _But I'm not sure that a negative result on a Google or TinEye search is
> indicative that copyrights are being violated._

Be sure. Since 1952 copyright has been assigned by default to the creator of
the content, and unauthorized use is a violation of that right, except...

> _If it is, there's a hell of a lot of material on the web (and Facebook)
> that needs to be removed._

...that it can be argued that much of the memeish usage of images falls within
the "fair use" or "fair dealing" provisions of the laws. Using it in a
commercial advertisement like you intended to does not and would be illegal.

EDIT: IANAL but I like to have some idea of the law before using other
people's content.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I just want to be clear that this was a $5 experiment that I intended to
share, post, and blog about for purposes of learning about Facebook
advertising.

I'm not claiming fair use, simply saying that, for the amount of money
involved, I was happy with doing as much diligence as I could and then be
willing to remove the ad if it was in error. And as far as I know, copyright
had nothing to do with the ad being rejected. My theory as expressed in the
article was that it was the effectiveness of the picture, not copyright, that
caused the problem. After all, I got the image from reading an article about
posting ads on Facebook. In that article it showed several FB ads with this
image on it. I thought that if the article was about posting ads, and this
image was included, then there was some implied warranty. Like I said, I'm not
trying to make excuses, simply explain. At the time I wasn't too terribly
interested in the providence of the image, simply learning how all the pieces
come together for an intended effect. Having said that, I'm perfectly happy
with using the image in a blog article about the image itself -- if that's not
fair use I don't know what is.

As of right this minute, none of us know who this person is or what kinds of
protections are involved. Since I have received multiple claims to know who
she is, and since they are all different people, I believe it is reasonable to
expect that the image is of insufficient resolution as to be identifying of
any one particular person. So -- unless something changes -- we can never
really _know_ , at least in the fashion you indicate. There is a huge amount
of material on the web that falls into this area, and a lot of murky edge
cases. For instance, FB thinks it is okay to post the same image on my
website's fan page, even though FB runs ads on those pages? FB can use the
image for it's commercial purposes but I can't use it for mine? All those
"memeish of images" you refer to -- much of it on FB feeds -- isn't an issue
for FB for purposes of placing their own ads?

There seems to be some serious inconsistencies here. I'm probably in error, so
I apologize to whomever I might have offended. But I am not happy at all that
I understand the current state of things to the degree necessary. I don't
think anybody does -- I think at the end of the day it's a personal evaluation
of risk. I'm also not happy that I wouldn't inadvertently do the same thing
again -- that I'm not, in fact, doing it right now, by sharing funny pictures
I find with my friends on FB.

That's really screwed up.

I could argue on and on about this -- but I have no desire to do so, or to use
the image in an ad. I strongly feel that some folks would have taken that
risk, and that it is a reasonable decision to make, and it bothers me that so
many people would let their judgment of what's too much risk for them be the
rule for everybody else.

------
JeremyBanks
So from what he's posted it appears that Mr. Markham thinks that ignorance of
copyright status of an image means that he can do what he wants with it; when
it actually means the complete opposite. That casts sufficient doubt on the
actual reasons behind what he's writing about that the posts loses any value,
except to promote his website. The title of this post even reads like a
linkbait ad you'd see on Facebook; quite a turn-off.

------
BudVVeezer
I am pretty sure "famous grey shirt girl" is actually Jose Lima's wife.

<http://digamma.net/btfwiki/Jose_Lima%27s_wife>

~~~
michaelcampbell
That looks nothing like the "grey shirt girl" _to me_. There's more to a
person than a large bosom and blonde hair, and actually even those 2 features
of the two pictures look radically different.

But, I could very easily be wrong.

------
joshes
To me, what is a bit disheartening about all of this is that if you want to
advertise to Facebook's massive user base, you have to play by Facebook's
inconsistent rules and enforcement; there's not much of a way around it. And
the system is not set up to help you succeed. It is instead set up to bend and
morph in whatever way helps Facebook, no matter how positively/negatively it
affects those actually purchasing the advertising and fueling the growth.

Of course it is within Facebook's rights to structure their platform as they
see fit. It is just a bit sad that those services and brands with the largest
power bases seem to throw their weight around in the most antagonistic ways
imaginable.

~~~
ceejayoz
It's hardly an inconsistent rule for them to say essentially "we know this
isn't your image, use one you own".

~~~
ecounysis
Does facebook have any legal liability if their advertisers use copyrighted
images?

~~~
ig1
Interesting point, I don't think anyone's actually tested it in court. For
Facebook photo sharing where they're merely a hosting site FB probably has the
DMCA protection, but for their Ad Network it's potentially more ambiguous.

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fomojola
Facebook's ad filtering is actually kinda retarded, and you're right: they
definitely accept/reject based on advertiser size. I tried running a little ad
using a picture of a pair of feet on a scale and it got the "doesn't meet the
standards" message. However I see pictures like that all the time, with quite
frankly little discernable difference except the name of the company running
the ad. I'll have to try it and see if it gets through with a Facebook landing
page.

~~~
scott_s
Was the image your own, or did you copy it from somewhere? If you copied it
from somewhere, what are the chances that it's a common enough image for FB to
know you don't own the copyright?

