I'm not sure if this article is about this, it doesn't sound like it, but a lot of web apps provide their development team with the ability to impersonate users as it's a great way to debug issues a user may be seeing.
It is not about this.
Facebook is impersonating users without their consent
21–30 of 76 posts
Re: Facebook is impersonating users without their consent
#22This has been happening for quite sometime. I believe those pages are sponsoring these advertisements, and essentially are showing that your friends had previously liked them. Nothing new.
You've unfortunately missed the point. The "Johnny Wonny" user never 'liked' the article/post about 2 Girls 1 Cup. He merely like the VICE page. Facebook is now deciding to show the post to all his friends with his name attached, without any mention to Johnny in any form.
Re: Facebook is impersonating users without their consent
#23The question is: can I opt out of this, or am I obliged to deal with this as long as I'm a Facebook user. I personally find this is pretty bad. I don't want my friends seeing my past likes from several years ago and seeing me endorse something stupid that I liked before (on the front page). Do I need to go through my likes and curate it all the time? It's different if it's just on my profile because having it in the…
To my mind it's the price of publically 'liking' something. With that in mind, I only 'like' things that I would be happy to market to my friends.
The problem is not just that Facebook is reposting one of your likes, it's that they're associating your like with a related item. The OP liked one article on vice.com, and now Facebook is promoting that he liked something "related" to penis shaped waffles.
Re: Facebook is impersonating users without their consent
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
To my mind it's the price of publically 'liking' something. With that in mind, I only 'like' things that I would be happy to market to my friends.
Have you manually retroactively disliked things you liked years ago, before policy changes?
I have, and do so regularly.
I'm hoping and wishing for something better than Facebook to come along so I can jump ship, because of things like this.
Re: Facebook is impersonating users without their consent
#25This article is disingenuous. Facebook is putting related sponsored content next to a 'like' in the feed and it is labeled as such. The complaint here boils down to that an unsophisticated viewer might think that sponsored content was what was originally liked when it was actually not. They say this is "impersonating a user". That seems way over the top.
Did you read the second part of it (and the article to which it links)? The implication is that Facebook is generating unintended likes for users out of thin air, so to speak. The screenshots provided clearly show what appear to be genuine "likes", not just a misleading juxtaposition. Moreover, it asserts that said users, once notified, were able to go manually "unlike" the content they claimed never to have liked in the first place.
I have no idea if this is actually happening, but if so it's quite a malicious practice on Facebook's part.
Re: Facebook is impersonating users without their consent
#26This is nothing new. Any facebook user has likely seen tons of these on their feed and so it's only somewhat logical to assume that, for your friends, you might come up in a similar fashion.
In fact, isn't this completely related? http://mashable.com/2013/01/03/facebook-settlement-email/. I think what the OP is referring to is exactly what Facebook calls a "Sponsored Story".
I don't think that this is Facebook "impersonating me without my consent". Perhaps it is Facebook "using me to advertise products without my consent". Either way, if I like "Spotify" on Facebook and then some of their posts come up on my friends' feeds because "So and So likes Spotify" then I understand that it is a form of advertising and I'm not going to throw a fit over it.
It's wrong if Facebook says that I like something which I don't. However, that isn't what they're doing at all.
Re: Facebook is impersonating users without their consent
#27When you're logged into Jonny Wonny and you're scrolling down your News Feed, how come a post from VICE is there (3:19 & 3:16)? You had to like VICE in order for it to appear in News Feed. So your whole argument is false. A friend could have liked a brand years ago and it could just be showing in your News Feed now, it doesn't have to show based on when they liked it.
The point the OP is trying to make is not the liking of VICE – the "Johnny Wonny" account legitimately liked VICE, but did not like the POST that VICE chose to "sponsor" and show to other users as if he had liked it. It becomes disingenuous when Facebook doesn't inform the user that they are posting a specific article/post on the users behalf, to all his friends.
It's pretty obvious, at least to me, that the person liked just the brand, and that the brand is just advertising a post below the like. I would think it would say "Johnny Wonny liked VICE's post" if the user liked the post.
Re: Facebook is impersonating users without their consent
#28I would say 'liking' a page is consent to have 'Friend likes this page' appear in your friends' news feeds. It doesn't state that they liked that particular post.
Annoying or not, I always thought it was reasonably clear that the post was coming from the page, not from the friend.
Re: Facebook is impersonating users without their consent
#29I hate when people say things like "without users consent" as if those users didn't accept the TOS which I'm sure gives Facebook the ability to repost your likes.
Agreed. And they clearly say in there that ToS are subject to change so only an idiot wouldn't re-review them weekly. I make it a habit as part of my routine.
Well it's a shitty routine to have. Not being able to assume good faith is what's destroying trust in the services we use.
Re: Facebook is impersonating users without their consent
#30By now, everyone should know that anything you post or do, at all, on Facebook is probably going to become public at some point. That is how Facebook makes its money. If you value your privacy then simply don't use Facebook. I stopped about 2 years ago and quite frankly I haven't missed it for a moment.
If you do want to use Facebook then accept that your data is not your own, no matter what they say and quit complaining about it.