Can Facebook use your personal photos to advertise without your permission? The answer is something you might want to be aware of.
I know like a lot of other people, I am guilty of just agreeing to the terms and conditions without really reading them. By just agreeing to the terms and conditions to Facebook you might just see yourself in an advertisement. One message that you might have seen on Facebook is " Facebook has agreed to let third party advertisers use your posted pictures without your permission." It continues with a prescription of how you can protect your photos. Facebook admits in its terms of service that all Intellectual Property content, like photos and videos, belong to you, the user. But the fine print essentially allows Facebook to do what it pleases with such content, with some limitations. In the terms it also says " You can use your privacy settings to limit how your name and profile picture may be associated with commercial or sponsored content. You give us permission to use your name and profile picture in connection with that content, subject to the limits you place." That may be a vague statement but the point is that Facebook can use your pictures for online advertising.(Lyons) One thing to take away is make sure you actually read the terms of service, vague as they may be, before signing up for a social networking service. In the meantime, you can change your privacy settings. Do you read the terms and conditions when using social media sites? Do you think that Facebook should be able to use your personal photos to advertise without your permission? Please explain your thoughts.
Resources:
Lyons, Catherine. "Facebook can use your pictures for ads, no permission required." Los Angeles Times [Los Angeles] 07 24 2009, n. pag. Print.
I would understand if Facebook would use your profile picture since they are the one that owns the website. Nothing on the internet is private. However, having a third party use your picture without permission is a bit unfair. How would we know if the picture is being used or not. If anything, there should be a reward system for users if ads decided to use your profile picture.
ReplyDelete“Internet advertising using Facebook photos” is a great topic to talk about because last years it reaches the high level of curiosity for some people who addict to the usage of social media websites. I am totally agree with you that most of them don’t actually read the terms and conditions of using any social media, they just click “next..next” and finishing the procedures of opening a new account.
ReplyDeleteI am one of the people who don’t read the terms and conditions of any social media website, but that don’t mean to steal my photos “Privacy” and use them to advertise some product or service. Nobody doubts that Facebook doesn’t know that the majority of their users don’t read the terms and conditions, so they are sort of putting you in a situation that even you don’t know what to do. As I heard from the professor in the class, some of them go to the courts and make claims and cases about that, but they don’t know they agreed to the terms and conditions.
Personally, I never read the terms and condition when using any type of web service or application; because I know that I definitely want to use them and that I will eventually have to agree if I wanted to proceed. If there was an option that allowed me to exclude some of the terms and not have them applied to me in person, it would be great and I would certainly read the terms. But unfortunately, there isn't, so I am "forced" to agree if I want to enjoy their service.
ReplyDeleteHowever, even so, I still believe that people should be careful with what they post and engage with online. Personally, I never post a status update or a comment without knowing that it would completely fine if it got out of my circle of friends. Anything done online is never secure enough and is always subject to exposure. Therefore, people shouldn't be too surprised when they learn that a photo of them is being used by FaceBook for advertisement because they have already "agreed" to that by not reading the terms and conditions. When it comes to the internet and the online network, it seems like privacy is no longer a privilege.
For me, I never read the terms and conditions when using social media sites. The reason for that id because there are a lot of points to read and I think it is a waste of time and I used to skip them. However, I think it is useful sometimes to take a quick look at some of the terms to make sure that you understand the terms and conditions.
ReplyDeleteI think that Facebook should not use our photos or videos without our permission. Many users do not to share their photos or videos and prefer to share it with friends and family only. Facebook can ask the user for their permission in order to use their photos or videos. For this reason, I have stopped uploading photos to Facebook and deleted some of my photos.
A good suggestion is that Facebook can pay for the user in order to use their photos in ads.
I dont think anyone ever reads the terms and conditions. This is a little different but I remember when the first time I had a smart phone a few years back, when downloading an application (Something as simple as Weatherbug), it asked me that terms of this application would allow it to monitor my phone calls, GPS, and other things. Of course I just accepted it.
ReplyDeleteAnd when we see a 5 page legal notice that just has a box to click to agree to terms, who actually reads all of that? Its seems a bit funny because I believe the company's standpoint is "Deal with it or dont use it", when a person decides not to use a product because of the legal notice.
Thats what I believe that Facebook standpoint is, either you have to accept the terms to let your photos to be shared, or just dont join Facebook. Although they did slip the fact that your photos could be shared throughout the internet, but it was completely legal, if not unethical.
DeleteI'm guilty of not reading the terms and conditions. When a policy has like 10 pages and gibberish you can't really understand, no one wants to read it, they just want to use the service. So, like most people, I just click accept. We all know this is bad practice but, we just kind of believe that a company wouldn't do anything TOO bad to harm us but, this Facebook example shows that you can't just put your trust into any company when it comes to accepting policies. I think companies should start providing like a bullet list or simpler way for everyone to read the policies but, of course they wouldn't do that because then they couldn't get away with stuff like they already do.
ReplyDeleteResponse By: Anthony McCollum