> 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.
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?
which is a german language scam site. i have no explanation how this happened, whether it is xcancel.com doing this or something loaded from twitter that caused xcancel to do this. never seen anythin like it before, would like to know more.
btw any further reloads of the xcancel url to that tweet totally work as expected.
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...
Those are incredible terms that no one read.
> 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!
This made me laugh and cry at the same time...
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.
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
Comment on that thread:
> This seems entirely counter-productive and creepy.
Apt description of Instagram in general.
Ten years ago maybe this causes outrage, but I'm not sure anyone cares in 2026 including potential customers.
Is there actual proof that they are doing this. Theres not much to go on in the tweet.
Besides the proof in the screenshot? What more do you want?
Do you think this user is faking it?
And they have a history of doing this. And their privacy/ToS allows it.
yes, it happened to me recently.
The photo wasn't mine, but showed a profile photo of one of my facebook friends, and it had the glasses and said "On my way!"
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.
Some reason that strip doesn't load for me.
https://xcancel.com/venturetwins/status/2071277885646868536
i edited it to the same url before opening as i usually do for twitter urls so that i can see the full conversation without being logged into twitter.
for some reason the url rewrote iteself to this: https://themenspiegel.click/c/de/52_merzchrupalla/?method=po...
which is a german language scam site. i have no explanation how this happened, whether it is xcancel.com doing this or something loaded from twitter that caused xcancel to do this. never seen anythin like it before, would like to know more.
btw any further reloads of the xcancel url to that tweet totally work as expected.
Sure you didn't just make a typo and hit a squatted domain?
Throwing an additional anecdote into the bucket, this did not happen for me. Any chance you have a dodgy extension installed?
I mean, what would you expect from company with morality of tobacco and slot machines producer? This is the least evil they are doing.
This thing resurface from time to time. It's the small text you never read. In this case, small part in ridiculously and intentionally big eula.