Hasta La Creative!

It seems the bone of contention over Facebook’s Beacon application was but the tip of the iceberg. Now Wired is exploring the company’s “Social Ad” platform and raising more questions about consent and privacy.

Have you used Facebook to give a shout-out to businesses you like? Best make sure your profile picture catches your best side, because you might be an unwitting star in those businesses’ next Facebook ad campaigns.

These ads, bought by participating businesses, insert your name and profile picture directly into their pitches. Based on anecdotal evidence, the ads started to roll out right before the holidays.

According to Facebook, a user has to take a “social action” in order to trigger the appearance of their name and picture in an advertisement.

Egg is hard to get off one’s face. Especially when it dries.

I can just hear the Facebookies explaining the concept to the ad buyers. UGC is all that, blah blah blah…But the problem is none of this matches up to user generated content. It’s all Facebook generated content riding on the backs of mostly unwitting users.