Social media has become a main tool for marketers to promote their products and services to consumers. Facebook’s self-serve ad tool is making it easy for companies to participate in promotional activities. However, a recent incident has caused many to question how advertising through Facebook is monitored by the social network itself.
Recently an online dating service, ionechat.com, advertised its services on Facebook by using an image of Rehtaeh Parsons, a deceased bullying victim. Initially thought to have resulted from Facebook’s social context advertising, the owner of the dating website admitted to obtaining the picture through a tool that copies images from Google searches. The advertiser was banned after a concerned Facebook user alerted the social media company.
The unethical behavior of the advertising company, ionechat.com, is clearly evident in this case. A company should be responsible in selecting the images it uses for advertising. By using a tool that generically captures images from Google, the company clearly does not care about the source of the images or the content directed at its consumers. The image of Rehtaeh Parsons was identified quickly due to the recent high profile nature of her case. However many other cases like this may go unnoticed. This raises the question, is Facebook obligated to monitor the ads that are marketed to its users? Ethically Facebook should take responsibility for the content it allows to reach their users and regardless of not being the producer of the offending ad, the social network should apologize for this incident.
Facebook users are fast becoming frustrated with the obvious integrated marketing that has escalated on Facebook in the past few years. Adding an experience of offending content to the already noisy and cluttered experience of social context advertising may cause many users to disengage from the social media altogether.