I was having a drink with a recently separated friend recently.
A few drinks in, he took a couple of minutes out to check his Facebook for new messages. What appeared on the page made us both recoil.
The offending part of the page was an advert for a 'flirt and date' website. (I have tried time and again to tell him that he should download Firefox & Adblock Plus, but, until now, it's been like banging my head against a brick wall....).
My friend is now listed as single....so, he gets served these crap dating ads all the time.
It has been covered on Feministing how shite these ads are, but, this time there was one major difference.
The picture that accompanied the advert was the profile picure of the daughter of one of our mutual friends. (The daughter is in both our friends list - we are both a friend of the family).
I spoke to her as soon as I could - she had no knowledge that her picture was being used in this advertisment.
Doing some digging, it appears that Facebook have allowed advertisers to use it's members profile pictures in adverts.
While the picture is not pornographic by any stretch of the imagination, it does worry me that the fact that it appears in an advert of this nature will, in some, neanderthal (for want of a better word), eyes see her as 'easy' or 'available'.
I am seriously worried that as a result, she may be more prone to sexual assault.
I believe that in general terms, a profile picture in an adert is a gross violation of privacy if without the users knowledge (of course, if someone is ASKED about it and then CONSENTED to it, then that's fine, but, this instance makes it MUCH worse...
If you wish to complain about this, send an email to : abuse@facebook.com
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I think this will block them from taking your pictures:
Click on "Settings" up at the top where you see the "Logout" link. Select "Privacy". Then select "News Feed and Wall". Next, select the tab that reads "Facebook Ads". In the drop down box, select "No One". Then save your changes.
Yes, this.
I totally agree that the use of profile pictures in advertisements without knowledge of the person is a gross misuse of Facebook.
However, once one is aware that this is going on, it is easy to remove yourself from being accessible to these ad sites.
Go to "settings" next to the "logout" button. Then choose "privacy settings". When you're on the privacy page click on "profile privacy". Then select "news feed and wall", then the tab that reads "facebook ads". There is a drop-down box and you should select "no one". Then save the changes!
Really we shouldn't have to do this at all but it's good to know that we have an option, albeit a sneakily hidden one.
Wow. I totally didn't even see that someone else had already posted these directions! Whoops!
I'm also kind of creeped out by the way Facebook ads sometimes use profile pics. It's pretty easy to turn off, but I didn't even find out until a few days ago and it's been going on for a while.
That said, I seriously doubt that this will make her more prone to sexual assault. I don't follow your logic at all on that one.
As others have said, this is totally gross and not appropriate. A few of my friends have changed their status messages to warnings about this and opt-out instructions.
While I do think it's creepy, I don't see this as dangerous. Profile pictures are not being shown to strangers, so only the girl's friends are seeing it. True, she could have some dangerous friends but they'd be dangerous with or without an ad.
At the time of posting, I wasn't aware that only friends could see your pictures in ads. Now that I know this, my post was alarmist and OTT.
Thanks for the instructions...I have passed these on.
It's still creepy, even if it is just your friends that can see it.
Slight off-topic, but I use Firefox and Adblock Plus and I still see Facebook advertisements. How can I configure Adblock to get rid of 'em?
While I agree that this is an innappropriate use of a profile picture, I'd say it is too much of a leap to say that someone who is said to be open to dating is leaving themself open to sexual assault. In fact I'd go as far as to suggest that perpatrating that view is related to victim blaming.
@Meep : Some ads/frames will have a small sign above them saying 'block', just click on that. For those that do not, hover your mouse over the ad you wish to block, then right click, then choose adblock this image from the menu that appears.
@Kandela : Yeah...I can actually see that. I apologise if that how it came across. I do make a disctinction between (1) having your profile on a dating site - nothing wrong with that - I have done so myself, as have several friends, both male and female, and (2) Having your picture used WITHOUT YOUR PERMISSION to advertise where the ads - if not the pictures themselves - have a less than subtle subtext.
Everyone needs to go to their facebook profile, go to Settings, then Privacy, then click on the tab called Facebook Ads, and then choose "no one."
(This has been going around as a status update-- you might want to post it on your status with a note that people should repost it, so it keeps spreading)
I don't think facebook was purposely meaning to tell someone to hook up with the daughter of a friend-- facebook has no way of knowing that that is the relationship in question. They just used a profile picture of someone in your friends list who didn't know to opt out of facebook ads.
I forgot that you also need to click on news feed and wall in there somewhere, so make sure you try it before reposting the steps.
I don't think facebook was purposely meaning to tell someone to hook up with the daughter of a friend-- facebook has no way of knowing that that is the relationship in question.
While I agree that it wasn't purposeful in that a female friend was chosen at random by computer, it doesn't take much working out that pretty much everyone will have Facebook friends of the opposite sex whose photo in ads like this would be grossly inappropriate : parents, siblings, daughters of friends (as was the case here), friends partners...
I think that to post these instructions as our status telling others to do the same is a great idea. The fact is, nobody was told in advance about this, even now, some on Facebook will simply not know about it.