On March 14th, I recommended that everyone buy Brian Brushwood’s Scam School Book 1. I am a huge fan of Brushwood, and he wanted to try to “scam” his way onto the Amazon best sellers list for that day by crowd sourcing his fans into buying the book. I have watched every one of his video shows, Scam School, and the e-book interested me extremely because it is filled with media.
Today, my friend sent me a screenshot of an “ad” I was in on Facebook. I have heard of Facebook using your “likes” and even your picture in ads, and I generally do not have a problem with this. I don’t even have a problem with them using my post for this ad, I said the words and I’ll stand by them. I am just shocked that they would use the entire content of my post to create an ad for one of my friends.
Here was the original posting:
This was the ad my friend saw today:
What I find most interesting is that this ad is completely out of context. Brushwood set the price of his book to half price (3.99$) on the day of launch, now the book costs 7.99$. I wonder if this should be considered “false advertising.”
If it concerns you that Facebook is using your content in their ads, you can easily disable this aspect of Facebook. Go to Account Settings -> Facebook Ads and select Edit Social Ad settings. There are two options “No one” or “Only my friends”. I have mine set to “Only my friends” — as I said, I already said this stuff on Facebook, them reusing it does not bother me. After all, Facebook (and similar services) remain free because of the ads. We are the product, the advertisers are the customers. I would not pay for Facebook, so I will allow them to use my image/content in their ads.
You know if you feel that FB profited from using your words then privacy terms of agreement or no, you probably have a case against them. Collect Damages.
“We are the product, the advertisers are the customers.”
You nailed it. That’s the case with all commercial media.
If you already posted it, it’s already out there for the world to see. So no big deal. Right? Besides, I would be impressed that they thought my post was so good they could use it for an ad.