Facebook is being hauled up in front of a judge by a bloke who thinks the social networking behemoth has been targetting minors through ad campaigns - and passing on their details.
Robin S Cohen, David A Cohen's guardian, is throwing the lawsuit out there. He has filed the lawsuit in California and wants to take the social networking giant to trial for the "violation of civil code 344" under unfair competition law.
Cohen reckons Facebook has broken the civil code by targeting minors and encouraging them to communicate with their friends while at the same time marketing the names of children who "like" adverts.
The lawsuit hinges on a loophole in California law which says parents must give consent before a minor's likeness or name is used for an advertisement. And Facebook doesn't do that.
On Facebook, you can "like" any status update or post in your stream, but you can also "like" ads. Facebook then will turn the advert into a social endorsement displaying the names of all of your buddies who like the ad.
In the lawsuit, which was obtained by Techdirt, Facebook claims that ad companies aren't targeting anyone in a network, instead users are encouraged to join and befriend people with like minded ideas. As anyone who has ever worked in advertising, known someone who worked in advertising or even seen an advert, that's what advertising is all about. Befriending people.
It said no personal information on the user is stored, just that they "liked" a specific ad that cropped up.
It could be argued that it's no different, really, to bunging on toy adverts on the after-school TV slot. They're virally spreading some marketing bloke or blokette's message to all their other mates, all little uns. Not that different to the playground except they're actively endorsing all these brands with their names plonked next to them.
I have been reading this article and I am so pleased this issue is now being discussed everywhere I see or visit. Well done and keep discussing this key issue. I own a children’s social networking site called taggitt.com our website has taken a VERY different view of safety and put this before any PROFITS. Unlike taggitt.com there are no other social networking sites with 24 hour monitoring facilities, this is what else we provide:
• there are no other social networking sites that flag and remove abusive or bullying posts before they reach the recipient
• CEOPS have been involved and consulted since day one – no other site has bothered to do this; we see this as a fundamental responsibility for all such sites.
• Other similar sites make millions a year yet cannot/do not invest in any safety measures – Taggitt.com has invested in this as a matter of course from conception to launch
• The security software behind taggitt.com has been designed from scratch as there is nothing out there to do the job at the moment
I’m sure you can see that if other sites had any of these measures in place then a lot of heartache might well have been avoided. We just want as many parents and kids to be aware of this issue and potential solution as possible to encourage kids - if they are going to use the internet anyway – to do it in a safer place, parents PLEASE encourage your children to use a safer site visit taggitt.com
I signed up to taggitt.com a week ago and it really does seem to look at the issues that the "big boys" of the internet social networking sites just ignore and pretend its not really happening on their site.