How Facebook is Turning Your Likes Into Ads
nytimes.comI'd be mortified if any of the ads contain my face. I don't mind ads. But its getting little too far with adding my face as an endorser. Like the guy who is mentioned in this article; I may share items out of amusements but that doesn't mean I endorse that product. And if anyone from my family sees them (who still don't differentiate between ads on Google search, let alone FB) then I'd be in trouble. Especially, if products like lubes etc.
So a bot is recycling your comments and pushing them as ads to people in your network. As someone who doesn't use Facebook, this seems totally screwed, and has put me off using it even more.
The exact thing happened to me, I shared the same story from Boing Boing and my friends told me what happened:
http://mrjasonroy.com/blog/2012/02/23/problem-facebook-spons...
And, lately, there have been a a bunch of ads from "whitetruffle" that have had my picture and freaked me out.
Spooking me out is not a good way to sell me things.
For those who didn't click through to the NYT article: a guy is surfing on Amazon, sees a product for sale, a 55-gallon drum of 'personal' lubricant (which might be the smallest size they sell at Costco), clicked the "like" button and wrote a funny comment. Next thing you know....
This is actually an exemplar of a FB Sponsored Story, which i believe was introduced via the Ads API not too long ago.
Does this make anyone worry that Facebook's reaching for some really desperate (and scary) ideas of generating ad revenue/recognition?
Maybe it's because I often use Facebook on behalf of retail businesses and consumer brands, but I've found Facebook's disregard for privacy unnerving for years now? And you haven't?
I'd rather not generalize this as Facebook's war on privacy moreso on the fact that, Facebook has a problem with generating ad revenue and this feature doesn't really make sense.