> According to Facebook's Statement of Rights and Responsibilities:
> You give us permission to use your name, profile picture, content, and information in connection with commercial, sponsored, or related content (such as a brand you like) served or enhanced by us. This means, for example, that you permit a business or other entity to pay us to display your name and/or profile picture with your content or information, without any compensation to you. If you have selected a specific audience for your content or information, we will respect your choice when we use it.
> If you have selected a specific audience for your content or information, we will respect your choice when we use it.
To be fair, if they actually honor this promise, and if it means what it sounds like in plain English -- i.e. that if you only posted your photo for friends, only friends can ever see it even if FB uses it for advertising -- that is a halfway decent mitigation of the issue. Not ideal, but then again, you're not paying for FB, so what did you really expect?
Meta — the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp — has a long history of abusing user trust. It has been fined billions for illegal activities like unauthorised data harvesting (Cambridge Analytica), illegal facial recognition, and mishandling children’s private information. Beyond what’s illegal, Meta is ethically notorious for emotional manipulation experiments, addictive design targeted at teenagers, rampant surveillance (even of non-users), promoting misinformation, and ignoring research that shows its products harm mental health.
Yes, like immediately after they were beta on unsuspecting university students. Anyone with a Facebook in 2026, ...well we can't just say they deserve it because that is definitely (no sarcasm intended) blaming the victim.
But sometimes it feels like, why does the Nigerian Prince scam keep working after 30 plus years? Do we have to sacrifice the weak and vulnerable to have any sense of freedom and creativity? I don't know honestly ...perhaps?
> If you don't want this, delete your facebook account
All that will happen is this term or similar will appear in some other "contract" of adhesion. Your bank? Your motherboard's EULA? Paypal or LLM vendor terms? Your phone OS/ISP? Your car? Anywhere and everywhere where some necessity of modern life is provided by a faceless multinational corporation.
If you don't want this, organize and lobby against it politically. That's what corporations do when they want to screw us over, and it's working great for them. Is the act-as-an-isolated-mere-consumer approach working great for us?
I understand that I give them permission. That's partly why I'm not a producer of content on those platforms, though I'll consume now and then. But I'll rarely produce text (other than usually a happy birthday now and then), and I'll never produce photos.
But what about the people in my photographs, whether on purpose or not? Did they give permission? That's the part that Meta doesn't really want to address.
Funny, because I got a payout last year from facebook settling a class action suit about their use of my and others' likeness in their fucking sponsored stories.
Many years ago (back when Facebook still had sidebar ads), my sister was presented with a dating ad for "Hot Christian Singles" accompanied by a photo of our brother.
It was hilarious, but also mind-boggling. In what scenario would pulling in a friend's profile photo create a useful ad?
Is Meta abusing its users a problem? Yes. Does the TOS allow for it? Yes. Can people decide to just create a shell account and not actually participate? Sure.
One of the real insidious problems with Instagram and to some extent Facebook is that they provide a free, low friction way for business to communicate with current or potential customers. As a result many small businesses use Instagram as replacement for a public facing website and perhaps a blog or email newsletter. Many small business in my region depend on Instagram for this purpose, its nearly universal. It helps keep you stuck in Instagram so that you can see a business' hours, menu, or special events. I guess a shell account is the answer but you're still going to have to navigate the skinner box feed.
If the only way to interact with a business is via Facebook or Instagram, I don't interact with the business.
Unfortunately this is more of a problem for me than it is for them. I hope my position on this becomes more popular over time so that everyone can stop using spy- and adware.
"No one" does not literally mean "not a single individual" in common English parlance, something that everyone (see what I did there?) here understands.
Something similar happened to me a few years ago. my photo was used in an ad, making it look like I was selling stuff and promoting a page I’d never even clicked on... absolutely mind-blowing....
After years off of it I got back on it because living in NYC it’s a lot easier to find and get invited to events in the arts if you’re on it. I wish it weren’t so. I hate every part of it that isn’t a utility.
For the median user, It really is impossible to have an alternative to instagram / whatsapp / facebook. It is so easy to live in a bubble and say I'll host my own things. but a totally different thing to have a functioning network effects machine.
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[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 62.9 ms ] threadYes, 2013: https://mashable.com/archive/facebook-ads-photo#ggcKnNfAUaqy
> According to Facebook's Statement of Rights and Responsibilities:
> You give us permission to use your name, profile picture, content, and information in connection with commercial, sponsored, or related content (such as a brand you like) served or enhanced by us. This means, for example, that you permit a business or other entity to pay us to display your name and/or profile picture with your content or information, without any compensation to you. If you have selected a specific audience for your content or information, we will respect your choice when we use it.
So it's not new. If you don't want this, delete your facebook account: https://www.facebook.com/privacy/dialog/delete-your-informat...
To be fair, if they actually honor this promise, and if it means what it sounds like in plain English -- i.e. that if you only posted your photo for friends, only friends can ever see it even if FB uses it for advertising -- that is a halfway decent mitigation of the issue. Not ideal, but then again, you're not paying for FB, so what did you really expect?
https://qz.com/consumer-federation-america-sues-meta-scam-ad...
https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-is-earning-fortu...
It is unlikely that Meta will suddenly gain morals scruples to avoid profiting from user content, with or without user consent.
This is the same company that invasively spies on its own employees, to train AI models.
https://www.wired.com/story/meta-accidentally-let-employees-...
Meta — the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp — has a long history of abusing user trust. It has been fined billions for illegal activities like unauthorised data harvesting (Cambridge Analytica), illegal facial recognition, and mishandling children’s private information. Beyond what’s illegal, Meta is ethically notorious for emotional manipulation experiments, addictive design targeted at teenagers, rampant surveillance (even of non-users), promoting misinformation, and ignoring research that shows its products harm mental health.
https://leehopkins.com/meta-data-abuse-revealed/
All that will happen is this term or similar will appear in some other "contract" of adhesion. Your bank? Your motherboard's EULA? Paypal or LLM vendor terms? Your phone OS/ISP? Your car? Anywhere and everywhere where some necessity of modern life is provided by a faceless multinational corporation.
If you don't want this, organize and lobby against it politically. That's what corporations do when they want to screw us over, and it's working great for them. Is the act-as-an-isolated-mere-consumer approach working great for us?
But what about the people in my photographs, whether on purpose or not? Did they give permission? That's the part that Meta doesn't really want to address.
This thing resurface from time to time. It's the small text you never read. In this case, small part in ridiculously and intentionally big eula.
> This seems entirely counter-productive and creepy.
Apt description of Instagram in general.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42615538
https://xkcd.com/1150/
It was hilarious, but also mind-boggling. In what scenario would pulling in a friend's profile photo create a useful ad?
Should have read the terms and conditions
One of the real insidious problems with Instagram and to some extent Facebook is that they provide a free, low friction way for business to communicate with current or potential customers. As a result many small businesses use Instagram as replacement for a public facing website and perhaps a blog or email newsletter. Many small business in my region depend on Instagram for this purpose, its nearly universal. It helps keep you stuck in Instagram so that you can see a business' hours, menu, or special events. I guess a shell account is the answer but you're still going to have to navigate the skinner box feed.
Unfortunately this is more of a problem for me than it is for them. I hope my position on this becomes more popular over time so that everyone can stop using spy- and adware.
signing away their rights to their photos? making psychopaths filthy rich?
if the surveillance glasses are coming, these people will also have signed away the commons, which are not theirs to give away
You'd know that if you used social media /s
Leaving these services looks difficult or impossible, until you do it, and the world just keeps spinning.
For the median user, It really is impossible to have an alternative to instagram / whatsapp / facebook. It is so easy to live in a bubble and say I'll host my own things. but a totally different thing to have a functioning network effects machine.