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Privacy and Fandom on Facebook

admin — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 21:30:45 +0000

Gawker has an article today about how Julia Allison may have broken the law by converting 2,500 of her Facebook ‘Friends’ into ‘Fans’ without their consent. Apparently, this violates laws against commercial appropriation – “simply put, the right to control whether one’s name and likeness is used in an advertisement to give the appearance of an endorsement.” Consenting to be friends with Julia Allison isn’t the same as consenting to publicly endorse her as a ‘Fan.’

The article quotes privacy expert Daniel Solove, who has written that the way that Facebook uses the ‘Become a Fan’ feature is actually against privacy law in all cases:

Suppose Michael Jordan says on national TV that he likes Wheaties. Does this allow Wheaties to use his image on its cereal box or in a commercial? The answer is no. The fact that Jordan says he likes Wheaties can be used in a news story; it can be used in a biography of Jordan. But it cannot be used in a commercial advertisement.

By extension, Solove argues, if Michael Jordan decides to ‘Become a Fan’ of Wheaties on Facebook, that information cannot be used in a commercial advertisement either – but on Facebook, it often is.

Cops find guns on Facebook

admin — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 15:29:05 +0000

The Sun reports that police in the UK are using Facebook to find young people with knives and guns. Superintentent Bob Hamilton from Strathclyde Police says,

He said: “We show the parents their pictures, recover the weapons and make sure they know that behaviour is unacceptable.

“We have large kitchen knives, axes, samurai swords, baseball bats, a huge number and different type of weapons – in simple terms weapons that can kill.”

Samurai swords?

Strangely when a friend of mine got stabbed at a New Years Eve party in Austin, TX several years ago, the police found his assailant because he was posing with knives on MySpace.

admin — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 16:31:46 +0000

In the UK, security services announced plans to monitor social networking sites, creating a ‘super database’ of people’s online behavior. Meanwhile, Facebook software engineers held a cupcake party to celebrate the 10 billionth photo uploaded to the site.