Didn't Facebook do this years and years ago?
Yes, 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...
PAPakG112 小时前
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.
SLslumberlust11 小时前
If car mfgs can engross passengers in ToS they may never see; I'd guess yes. At least until someone challenges it.
CWcwillu1 小时前
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.
SMsmalltorch18 小时前
Those are incredible terms that no one read.
GRGroxx15 小时前
Almost literally every single social media site in the past ~15+ years has had those exact terms in it.
Everything you upload, almost everywhere, can be used by the site owners to do whatever they like for their own purposes (reselling is somewhat often excluded / non-transferrable). There are a handful of exceptions, but they're very much exceptions, not the normal rule.
GRgreggsy14 小时前
HN maybe?
VIvictorbjorklund13 小时前
HN terms: "By uploading any User Content you hereby grant and will grant Y Combinator and its affiliated companies a nonexclusive, worldwide, royalty free, fully paid up, transferable, sublicensable, perpetual, irrevocable license to copy, display, upload, perform, distribute, store, modify and otherwise use your User Content for any Y Combinator-related purpose in any form, medium or technology now known or later developed."
DADANmode13 小时前
Dude…just read them!
ACacdha18 小时前
I cancelled my Instagram account when they added those terms in the early 2010s. At the time it was mostly photographers reading them and closing accounts but it wasn’t exactly a secret.
ALalex113812 小时前
I get sad because people liked Insta pre-Zuckerberg. Like, it was growing. People seem to couch it in terms of "They had 12 employees. They weren't going anywhere". But they were. Zuckerberg just wanted to enlargen his war chest
I refuse to sign up for an Insta. I will not acquiesce to 'lol we're going to put a login wall on every page'
CIcindyllm11 小时前
[deleted]
DADANmode18 小时前
Speak for yourself.
“Few”, maybe.
SAsatvikpendem17 小时前
"No one" does not literally mean "not a single individual" in common English parlance, something that everyone (see what I did there?) here understands.
BRbreezybottom14 小时前
Yes it does. If I'm asked how many people are in the pool and I respond "no one", that means not a single individual.
DADANmode14 小时前
It literally does mean that.
It figuratively does not.
You’re not going to change the meaning of two words, here…
SMsmalltorch18 小时前
I mean, I read them, but just goes to show the majority of people skipped this important reading.
If anyone actually read them it's typically a unlimited unrestricted pipe of data they can use for anything.
ESEspressosaurus17 小时前
No one reads the terms and conditions. I went to a resort and read the T&C they made you sign to sign in and was told I was the only person in months who had actually done so.
And even I have mostly given up on the website T&C because most of them are so lengthy, a lot like I've given up on disabling javascript since the modern web frequently won't even render anything if you disable it.
CUcute_boi18 小时前
99% of people don't read terms and condition.
DADANmode17 小时前
We’re saying the same thing.
RRrrgok2 小时前
I give you the permission, but license cost for using my things is 30% of the revenue.
UNunknown18 小时前
[deleted]
ROrootusrootus17 小时前
> 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?
FWfweimer12 小时前
I think you got it backwards. Wouldn't it be way worse if they used your likeness for advertising to your friends? Compared to random people who don't know you?
MImicrogpt17 小时前
"respect your choice" sounds like it means something but doesn't mean something.
BRbryanrasmussen15 小时前
respect your choice may mean something if a court decides.
BRbryanrasmussen15 小时前
I wonder if terms and conditions vary between jurisdictions. I would guess so.
XUXunjin13 小时前
They can definitely be questioned in courts.
BRbryanrasmussen12 小时前
Yes, but let us suppose I am a big company.
I have lawyers make up terms and conditions that are really great for me, but which might cause real problems in some specific jurisdiction. Do I serve two terms and conditions or just one and hope I don't get in trouble.
I think once I'm big enough and have expensive lawyers might as well craft the terms appropriate to areas.
But now gets tricky in area A I can say "We have the right to change these terms and conditions unilaterally at any time we wish and you will be bound by the new conditions"
Now someone in area A moves to area B where terms and conditions are not as great for my company, and where you are not allowed to change terms and conditions unilaterally. Maybe I change terms for A to B immediately when they move to B so I don't get problems. But now they move out of B back to A, I probably have to ask them to agree to A conditions again.
Anyway, it is funny wondering just how nefarious these companies are with the terms and conditions.
PApavel_lishin18 小时前
> If you don't want this, delete your facebook account
What? I thought I could just paste a paragraph of all-caps legalese to my profile, and it would solve this!
PBpbhjpbhj17 小时前
To be fair it seems like it should be equally valid in contract law.
HMhmry15 小时前
I can confirm it works exactly as well as putting "everything belongs to its original owners, no copyright intended" in your youtube video description
STsteve197718 小时前
This made me laugh and cry at the same time...
RErealusername15 小时前
Both sounds kind of the same thing to me, a wall of text that nobody will read and each essentially saying "I have the right to do whatever I want"
LIlike_any_other14 小时前
> 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?
JUjubilee3315 小时前
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?
VEvee-kay16 小时前
FYI, Meta earns billions by showing scam ads.
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/
RARattlesnakeJake18 小时前
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?
DEdewey18 小时前
> In what scenario would pulling in a friend's profile photo create a useful ad?
Exactly in the scenario you just described. You still remember it and you are actively talking about it years after the fact.
FUfumblebee18 小时前
wouldn't "useful ad" imply either 1) clicking through and buying the product or service, or else 2) building up a positive brand association to help increase sales later?
remembering an advert correlates but is different to it being valuable.
SVsvachalek16 小时前
Yeah I remember some studies showed this with overly sexy ads. They were very memorable to the audience but all they remembered was hot chicks, they couldn't recall the product.
NOnot_a_bot_4sho17 小时前
Sounds like the viewers were highly unlikely to have clicked through. Cost the advertiser a view but lost the conversion.
Useful ad for Facebook. They made money on it. The advertiser didn't.
THtheNotFractured14 小时前
If the viewers don't click on facebook, advertisers would stop advertising on facebook.
CHchrz13 小时前
but lot of clicks doesnt happen because of the content
RARattlesnakeJake17 小时前
But it didn't bring clicks to the website nor goodwill toward the company.
No one remembers who ran the ad. Even if we did, it would only be in a negative light due to a weird and off-putting advertising approach.
DEdewey17 小时前
Don't get hung up on this specific example of the dating ad.
There's a difference between awareness campaigns and click / conversion campaigns and if there's some ads for a garden chair and your friend is sitting on it you'll definitely remember it more than some random model. Or clothes that are advertised on your body. Not saying that's the future we want, but it would definitely work for a while.
RARattlesnakeJake15 小时前
That doesn't come across as any less creepy to the average user: "They stole my friend's likeness to sell me a lawn chair" still feels slimy.
I'm sure the real reason is that Facebook added a poorly thought out feature to their marketing tools around that time, and someone just decided to try it out.
HBhbn16 小时前
Zero people in the process of creating that ad said "we'll suggest people date their siblings, it'll be so memorable"
That is absolutely not a success story when trying to market a Christian dating platform.
DEdewey16 小时前
It's about the "in which scenario" question of the OP, not this dating ad in particular.
DWdwa359216 小时前
This is a ridiculous argument that just because someone still remembers something means it was a good advertising strategy. This is partly why advertising sucks. The correct metric in this case would be did the user actually go on the date with the said person or at least initiated the conversation. In this person's case, very likely not. So the strategy is dumb, ridiculous and laughable but not useful or good in any sense.
GOgodwinson__4-814 小时前
You seem ignorant of how money is made in these situations. The money is already made way before anyone ever goes on an actual date. Therefore the people showing you the ads are still incentivized to show the ad.
If you thought about things more clearly you would also realize that a platform that tried to measure something more like "how did the date actually go" would be even more dystopian. You want an algorithm to start pricing in the cost of you falling in love? If a date goes amazing should the software send you an additional invoice? People who use these apps are already essentially outsourcing interpersonal relationships. How far do you want to take that? The lack of precision is not "dumb, ridiculous and laughable" it's actually a saving grace.
BOboelboel16 小时前
Many people want to date their own friends? Seeing your friend is on the site would show it's okay to use?
RIRIMR13 小时前
They're married now, too.
THthemaninthedark14 小时前
I could see people clicking through to see if their friend had a dating profile, if not for the romantic interest the gossip interest.
RARattlesnakeJake12 小时前
Okay, this may actually explain it XD
PYPyWoody17 小时前
Roll tide.
SRsrmatto18 小时前
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.
HAhaliskerbas18 小时前
Every time I try to create a shell account, it gets banned with no reason given. Even if it's just to follow a few influencer accounts.
SRsrmatto18 小时前
Well there you go, there is no reasonable way to be a non-participant while also staying up to date on businesses that choose to use the platform.
MImicrogpt17 小时前
We need a Nitter for Instagram.
BUburkaman17 小时前
https://imginn.com/ or https://codeberg.org/irelephant/kittygram
HMhmokiguess13 小时前
you also add `kk` in front of it and it renders just the embedded content
PLplagiarist17 小时前
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.
SRsrmatto15 小时前
Small businesses are pretty important for a number of reasons and I think if people adopted this stance it would hurt them a lot more than it would hurt Meta.
CUcute_boi18 小时前
You can't create shell account on fb/meta anymore. They will ask to turn on camera and rotate your head.
CAcatlikesshrimp17 小时前
U a manequin head. Add hair and moles. It mightbtake more than one try but it works.
Eventually, people who make shell accounts will be declared creepy child predators, but that isn't the case, yet.
BRbreezybottom14 小时前
I'm not making a mannequin head to see a restaurant menu.
GRgreenchair11 小时前
sounds like a business opportunity!
EDed_elliott_asc17 小时前
Print out a face of someone on Facebook and use that?
AFafavour17 小时前
It’ll be obvious when you turn “their” head that it’s not real.
UNunknown7 小时前
[deleted]
ROrolph16 小时前
print out a panagram of a head, and paste it to a lampshade, or use a mannequin head and describe how you were horribly burned as a child.
REremywang17 小时前
Just stop using that cursed website
FOfourside16 小时前
It really is that simple. “Users of company with a long track record of unethical behavior surprised at the company’s latest unethical business decision.”
I know it’s not easy for some to stop using their platform for some reason or another. That’s the point. When you use their product not because they are the best choice in a free market with options, but when you use it because you have to. Just don’t surprised when FB keeps pushing the limits.
FRfrollogaston13 小时前
Maybe they're not surprised, they just don't care
CRcryo3214 小时前
Yeah just done that. Hosed my Instagram account.
RCrchaud13 小时前
Even if you don't use FB, pictures of you tagged by your friends are fair game.
AUAuthAuth10 小时前
Dont have friends, simple as
PEpenr0se18 小时前
This shouldn't really be surprising. It's very similar to what they did ~1.5 year ago when they started to use users' photos to promote Meta AI
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42615538
ENencomiast18 小时前
I feel like having an account on a Meta site is today’s equivalent of being a smoker.
NInicce18 小时前
There isn't better analogy. I hope it spreads and we will see the same effect and social pressure as smokers faced.
CAcatlikesshrimp17 小时前
Vaping is the new smoking. Except you knew what was inside a cigar, while vape liquid is a generic term for anything inside a bottle.
BUbusymom013 小时前
Agreed. I rarely see smokers nowadays but I see a lot of vapers everywhere even including on public transit and kids.
ANanon_shill10 小时前
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.
BRbreezybottom14 小时前
Being a smoker in the 1950s maybe.
TAtantalor18 小时前
Comment on that thread:
> This seems entirely counter-productive and creepy.
Apt description of Instagram in general.
VOVortexLain16 小时前
Sometimes it seems like Black Mirror screenwriters work at Meta as a side hustle.
JMjmorenoamor16 小时前
Why? Because they can, and they will.
Leaving these services looks difficult or impossible, until you do it, and the world just keeps spinning.
REred_admiral15 小时前
As if Meta glasses weren't creepy enough already.
GIgiancarlostoro15 小时前
Amazing we live in an age where making a fake image of someone that looks realistic enough (and for a tiny thumbnail resolution to boot) with a company that makes arguably lesser used but somewhat frontier AI models, not using said models to make these ads less intrusive, whilst still making them feel slightly personalized.
ZHZhyl18 小时前
The XKCD for this exact scenario is 14 years old.
https://xkcd.com/1150/
FUfullshark18 小时前
Kind of a stretch, these days can't imagine anyone that views instagram as a place to store their cherished photos also.
JIjijijijij16 小时前
Yeah, and then the charging businesses start selling your stuff anyway. So really, it's the comic creator, who is naive.
DOdoublerabbit18 小时前
Some reason that strip doesn't load for me.
NInicce18 小时前
It is just saying that if you don't pay for something, you are the product. I think it still fits well here.
ALalex113811 小时前
You can pay for Meta Verified. I think you'll still get banned
I'm getting very tired of this trope. Businesses need to do better. End of story
MCmcmcmc15 小时前
Always amusing when people discover they’re paying for free services with something other than money.
RErenegade-otter13 小时前
The news here is that people are still using instagram.
DEdewey12 小时前
They have two billion monthly active users worldwide. There's many parts of this world that run on Meta (WhatsApp / Instagram) for things from government communication to every business only having IG pages or doing business through it.
HMhmokiguess13 小时前
> "The era of ultra personalized ads has begun"
I think that's maybe a decade old by now if not more, a little late to the party I'd say
"Damn, this is creepy level though & generally I’m all for ads knowing everything about me. Putting my wife’s profile pic in an ad is too much"
Presumably this reply is a joke?
RIricardofranco18 小时前
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....
HAhalflife16 小时前
I actually find this incredible, since this highlights how desperate they are to advertise these glasses
WAwartywhoa2316 小时前
IG users were the proverbial product on this free-to-partake vanity fair since its inception.
FUfullshark19 小时前
Ten years ago maybe this causes outrage, but I'm not sure anyone cares in 2026 including potential customers.
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Didn't Facebook do this years and years ago? Yes, 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...
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.
If car mfgs can engross passengers in ToS they may never see; I'd guess yes. At least until someone challenges it.
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.
Those are incredible terms that no one read.
Almost literally every single social media site in the past ~15+ years has had those exact terms in it. Everything you upload, almost everywhere, can be used by the site owners to do whatever they like for their own purposes (reselling is somewhat often excluded / non-transferrable). There are a handful of exceptions, but they're very much exceptions, not the normal rule.
HN maybe?
HN terms: "By uploading any User Content you hereby grant and will grant Y Combinator and its affiliated companies a nonexclusive, worldwide, royalty free, fully paid up, transferable, sublicensable, perpetual, irrevocable license to copy, display, upload, perform, distribute, store, modify and otherwise use your User Content for any Y Combinator-related purpose in any form, medium or technology now known or later developed."
Dude…just read them!
I cancelled my Instagram account when they added those terms in the early 2010s. At the time it was mostly photographers reading them and closing accounts but it wasn’t exactly a secret.
I get sad because people liked Insta pre-Zuckerberg. Like, it was growing. People seem to couch it in terms of "They had 12 employees. They weren't going anywhere". But they were. Zuckerberg just wanted to enlargen his war chest I refuse to sign up for an Insta. I will not acquiesce to 'lol we're going to put a login wall on every page'
[deleted]
Speak for yourself. “Few”, maybe.
"No one" does not literally mean "not a single individual" in common English parlance, something that everyone (see what I did there?) here understands.
Yes it does. If I'm asked how many people are in the pool and I respond "no one", that means not a single individual.
It literally does mean that. It figuratively does not. You’re not going to change the meaning of two words, here…
I mean, I read them, but just goes to show the majority of people skipped this important reading. If anyone actually read them it's typically a unlimited unrestricted pipe of data they can use for anything.
No one reads the terms and conditions. I went to a resort and read the T&C they made you sign to sign in and was told I was the only person in months who had actually done so. And even I have mostly given up on the website T&C because most of them are so lengthy, a lot like I've given up on disabling javascript since the modern web frequently won't even render anything if you disable it.
99% of people don't read terms and condition.
We’re saying the same thing.
I give you the permission, but license cost for using my things is 30% of the revenue.
[deleted]
> 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?
I think you got it backwards. Wouldn't it be way worse if they used your likeness for advertising to your friends? Compared to random people who don't know you?
"respect your choice" sounds like it means something but doesn't mean something.
respect your choice may mean something if a court decides.
I wonder if terms and conditions vary between jurisdictions. I would guess so.
They can definitely be questioned in courts.
Yes, but let us suppose I am a big company. I have lawyers make up terms and conditions that are really great for me, but which might cause real problems in some specific jurisdiction. Do I serve two terms and conditions or just one and hope I don't get in trouble. I think once I'm big enough and have expensive lawyers might as well craft the terms appropriate to areas. But now gets tricky in area A I can say "We have the right to change these terms and conditions unilaterally at any time we wish and you will be bound by the new conditions" Now someone in area A moves to area B where terms and conditions are not as great for my company, and where you are not allowed to change terms and conditions unilaterally. Maybe I change terms for A to B immediately when they move to B so I don't get problems. But now they move out of B back to A, I probably have to ask them to agree to A conditions again. Anyway, it is funny wondering just how nefarious these companies are with the terms and conditions.
> If you don't want this, delete your facebook account What? I thought I could just paste a paragraph of all-caps legalese to my profile, and it would solve this!
To be fair it seems like it should be equally valid in contract law.
I can confirm it works exactly as well as putting "everything belongs to its original owners, no copyright intended" in your youtube video description
This made me laugh and cry at the same time...
Both sounds kind of the same thing to me, a wall of text that nobody will read and each essentially saying "I have the right to do whatever I want"
> 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?
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?
FYI, Meta earns billions by showing scam ads. 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/
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?
> In what scenario would pulling in a friend's profile photo create a useful ad? Exactly in the scenario you just described. You still remember it and you are actively talking about it years after the fact.
wouldn't "useful ad" imply either 1) clicking through and buying the product or service, or else 2) building up a positive brand association to help increase sales later? remembering an advert correlates but is different to it being valuable.
Yeah I remember some studies showed this with overly sexy ads. They were very memorable to the audience but all they remembered was hot chicks, they couldn't recall the product.
Sounds like the viewers were highly unlikely to have clicked through. Cost the advertiser a view but lost the conversion. Useful ad for Facebook. They made money on it. The advertiser didn't.
If the viewers don't click on facebook, advertisers would stop advertising on facebook.
but lot of clicks doesnt happen because of the content
But it didn't bring clicks to the website nor goodwill toward the company. No one remembers who ran the ad. Even if we did, it would only be in a negative light due to a weird and off-putting advertising approach.
Don't get hung up on this specific example of the dating ad. There's a difference between awareness campaigns and click / conversion campaigns and if there's some ads for a garden chair and your friend is sitting on it you'll definitely remember it more than some random model. Or clothes that are advertised on your body. Not saying that's the future we want, but it would definitely work for a while.
That doesn't come across as any less creepy to the average user: "They stole my friend's likeness to sell me a lawn chair" still feels slimy. I'm sure the real reason is that Facebook added a poorly thought out feature to their marketing tools around that time, and someone just decided to try it out.
Zero people in the process of creating that ad said "we'll suggest people date their siblings, it'll be so memorable" That is absolutely not a success story when trying to market a Christian dating platform.
It's about the "in which scenario" question of the OP, not this dating ad in particular.
This is a ridiculous argument that just because someone still remembers something means it was a good advertising strategy. This is partly why advertising sucks. The correct metric in this case would be did the user actually go on the date with the said person or at least initiated the conversation. In this person's case, very likely not. So the strategy is dumb, ridiculous and laughable but not useful or good in any sense.
You seem ignorant of how money is made in these situations. The money is already made way before anyone ever goes on an actual date. Therefore the people showing you the ads are still incentivized to show the ad. If you thought about things more clearly you would also realize that a platform that tried to measure something more like "how did the date actually go" would be even more dystopian. You want an algorithm to start pricing in the cost of you falling in love? If a date goes amazing should the software send you an additional invoice? People who use these apps are already essentially outsourcing interpersonal relationships. How far do you want to take that? The lack of precision is not "dumb, ridiculous and laughable" it's actually a saving grace.
Many people want to date their own friends? Seeing your friend is on the site would show it's okay to use?
They're married now, too.
I could see people clicking through to see if their friend had a dating profile, if not for the romantic interest the gossip interest.
Okay, this may actually explain it XD
Roll tide.
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.
Every time I try to create a shell account, it gets banned with no reason given. Even if it's just to follow a few influencer accounts.
Well there you go, there is no reasonable way to be a non-participant while also staying up to date on businesses that choose to use the platform.
We need a Nitter for Instagram.
https://imginn.com/ or https://codeberg.org/irelephant/kittygram
you also add `kk` in front of it and it renders just the embedded content
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.
Small businesses are pretty important for a number of reasons and I think if people adopted this stance it would hurt them a lot more than it would hurt Meta.
You can't create shell account on fb/meta anymore. They will ask to turn on camera and rotate your head.
U a manequin head. Add hair and moles. It mightbtake more than one try but it works. Eventually, people who make shell accounts will be declared creepy child predators, but that isn't the case, yet.
I'm not making a mannequin head to see a restaurant menu.
sounds like a business opportunity!
Print out a face of someone on Facebook and use that?
It’ll be obvious when you turn “their” head that it’s not real.
[deleted]
print out a panagram of a head, and paste it to a lampshade, or use a mannequin head and describe how you were horribly burned as a child.
Just stop using that cursed website
It really is that simple. “Users of company with a long track record of unethical behavior surprised at the company’s latest unethical business decision.” I know it’s not easy for some to stop using their platform for some reason or another. That’s the point. When you use their product not because they are the best choice in a free market with options, but when you use it because you have to. Just don’t surprised when FB keeps pushing the limits.
Maybe they're not surprised, they just don't care
Yeah just done that. Hosed my Instagram account.
Even if you don't use FB, pictures of you tagged by your friends are fair game.
Dont have friends, simple as
This shouldn't really be surprising. It's very similar to what they did ~1.5 year ago when they started to use users' photos to promote Meta AI https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42615538
I feel like having an account on a Meta site is today’s equivalent of being a smoker.
There isn't better analogy. I hope it spreads and we will see the same effect and social pressure as smokers faced.
Vaping is the new smoking. Except you knew what was inside a cigar, while vape liquid is a generic term for anything inside a bottle.
Agreed. I rarely see smokers nowadays but I see a lot of vapers everywhere even including on public transit and kids.
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.
Being a smoker in the 1950s maybe.
Comment on that thread: > This seems entirely counter-productive and creepy. Apt description of Instagram in general.
Sometimes it seems like Black Mirror screenwriters work at Meta as a side hustle.
Why? Because they can, and they will. Leaving these services looks difficult or impossible, until you do it, and the world just keeps spinning.
As if Meta glasses weren't creepy enough already.
Amazing we live in an age where making a fake image of someone that looks realistic enough (and for a tiny thumbnail resolution to boot) with a company that makes arguably lesser used but somewhat frontier AI models, not using said models to make these ads less intrusive, whilst still making them feel slightly personalized.
The XKCD for this exact scenario is 14 years old. https://xkcd.com/1150/
Kind of a stretch, these days can't imagine anyone that views instagram as a place to store their cherished photos also.
Yeah, and then the charging businesses start selling your stuff anyway. So really, it's the comic creator, who is naive.
Some reason that strip doesn't load for me.
It is just saying that if you don't pay for something, you are the product. I think it still fits well here.
You can pay for Meta Verified. I think you'll still get banned I'm getting very tired of this trope. Businesses need to do better. End of story
Always amusing when people discover they’re paying for free services with something other than money.
The news here is that people are still using instagram.
They have two billion monthly active users worldwide. There's many parts of this world that run on Meta (WhatsApp / Instagram) for things from government communication to every business only having IG pages or doing business through it.
> "The era of ultra personalized ads has begun" I think that's maybe a decade old by now if not more, a little late to the party I'd say
https://xcancel.com/venturetwins/status/2071277885646868536
"Damn, this is creepy level though & generally I’m all for ads knowing everything about me. Putting my wife’s profile pic in an ad is too much" Presumably this reply is a joke?
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....
I actually find this incredible, since this highlights how desperate they are to advertise these glasses
IG users were the proverbial product on this free-to-partake vanity fair since its inception.
Ten years ago maybe this causes outrage, but I'm not sure anyone cares in 2026 including potential customers.