
Possibly the worst Facebook ad ever - antr
http://glencanning.com/2013/09/possibly-the-worst-facebook-ad-ever/
======
eksith
At the risk of being indelicate, what are the chances the company that used
the images actually knew anything about her? A lot of these companies grab
whatever image they "find" online; their reasoning (not justifiable, but it's
still used) because it was posted online without credit, it must be in the
public domain - or whatever the equivalent term is where PD isn't recognized.

Since the parent company of the dating site is based in Vietnam, this seems
more likely than just maliciousness.

FB likely does no serious vetting of these images besides looking for obvious
offensiveness and a face among a sea of faces isn't likely going to trigger
any red flags. Besides that, they probably outsource their image vetting as
well, so it's not unlikely the cultural disconnect played a part in this.

~~~
denzquix
Callous indifference can be just as bad as malice.

I'm reminded of these t-shirts with "Keep Calm And..." slogans that were
allegedly generated automatically (presumably culled from web searches) and
sold on Amazon without human intervention:
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21640347](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21640347)

I think the lesson is, if your business model MUST involve pulling stuff from
the Internet arbitrarily, it is no less your responsibility as if you had
crafted it yourself if you intend to commercially repurpose it.

~~~
eksith
This situation is slightly different IMO. I'm not saying ignorance is an
excuse, but the "Keep Calm..." ads are manufacturing the offensive product.

That company was actively engaged plagiarism and product _is_ the trite
rehash. The FB company wasn't selling the image per-se, but merely
appropriating it for their service. If they were selling copies of Rehtaeh
Parsons' image as a product itself rather than an uncredited and, as far as
they're concerned, anonymous image of a girl to help them push the service,
then they would be comparable.

------
stickydink
Cached:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:hEowO-S...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:hEowO-
SA4boJ:glencanning.com/2013/09/possibly-the-worst-facebook-ad-
ever/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk)

------
elleferrer
"Once an image is out there it’s out there forever." ...this advice should
have been taught to the kids who recently broke-in, partied hard, and trashed
a former NFL player's home in New York -
[http://www.helpmesave300.com/](http://www.helpmesave300.com/)

------
damianknz
I got through and read the article as well as an earlier one. They are worth
reading if you have daughters, they're compulsory if you have sons.

~~~
lobotryas
What makes you say that?

------
bryanlarsen
What an excellent article. As a father I would never have been able to write
something so reasoned. The final paragraph is great advice:

"Remember, just because those images on Facebook are free it doesn’t mean they
won’t be costly, especially if you lift images of minors. That’s probably a
good corporate rule to live by."

------
vldx
Why the site which released the ads is not opening? Showing a parked domain
page from GoDaddy?

~~~
eksith
According to one of the comments on the page :

    
    
      "Facebook did permanently disable the advertiser’s account and 
      it looks like the site they were advertising is closed as well." - Mike Reed
    

So there you have it. Looks like the site is pretty much done operating since
its reputation is utterly destroyed.

------
Sami_Lehtinen
Yeah, this must be worst Facebook ad ever: "Resource Limit Is Reached The
website is temporarily unable to service your request as it exceeded resource
limit. Please try again later. Apache/2.2.24 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.24
OpenSSL/1.0.0-fips mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4
FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 Server at glencanning.com Port 80", seems to be
completely unrelated and theferore quite a bad ad.

~~~
nhebb
Since you weren't able to read the article, I'll give you a head's up that you
should save face while you can and delete your comment. It's not the kind of
topic to be flippant about. The article was written by the father of Rahteah
Parsons
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Rehtaeh_Parsons](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Rehtaeh_Parsons))
after he found out that her image was being used in a dating site's facebook
ads.

