Facebook: Our targeted ads aren't creepy

Facebook's targeted advertising program is "materially different from behavioral targeting as it is usually discussed," Chris Kelly, the social network's chief privacy officer, said in remarks prepared for a Thursday morning hearing before two House subcommittees.

"In offering its free service to users, Facebook is dedicated to developing advertising that is relevant and personal without invading users' privacy, and to giving users more control over how their personal information is used in the online advertising environment," read the remarks for two subcommittees of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce.

The hearing, titled "Behavioral Advertising: Industry Practices And Consumers' Expectations," was also slated to include testimonies from Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy; Scott Cleland, president of Precursor; Charles Curran, executive director of the Network Advertising Initiative; Edward Felten, director of the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University; Anne Toth, vice president of policy and head of privacy at Yahoo; and Nicole Wong, deputy general counsel at Google.

Chris Kelly

(Credit: Kelly2010.com)

Kelly, a White House staffer under President Clinton, has announced an exploratory bid to run for attorney general in California.

Social-media sites like Facebook, where members fill out extensive personal profiles that can detail everything from their music tastes to travel plans to political leanings, are at the forefront of new developments in behavioral ad targeting. The Facebook Ads program lets advertisers fine-tune their campaigns to reach specific demographics and audiences. Kelly insisted that this does not constitute an invasion of user privacy, an Internet-wide concern that the Federal Trade Commission has been exploring at the request of privacy advocates.

"The FTC's behavioral advertising principles recognize the important distinctions made by Facebook in its ad targeting between the use of aggregate, non-personally identifiable information that is not shared or sold to third parties," Kelly's remarks read, "versus other sites' and companies surreptitious harvesting, sharing and sale of personally identifiable information to third party companies."

Privacy concerns are nothing new to Facebook. The social network went through a user backlash over the introduction of its News Feed in 2006, and a bigger one over the controversial Beacon advertising program. More recently, a revision to Facebook's terms of use prompted consumer advocacy blog The Consumerist to highlight language that it said meant that Facebook claimed ownership of user profile data and photos.

"In February of this year, we looked to revise our Terms of Use, simplifying them to cut out as much legalese as possible and explain them in plain language," Kelly's remarks explained. "When we released a first version of our new terms, a blog misinterpreted our simplification of our copyright license, claiming that it meant we were seeking to own user content. The user reaction was predictably swift and severe, and we needed to choose among weathering the storm, revising the language, and introducing an entirely new process that would directly involve users in the governance of the site."

Facebook ultimately underwent a "notice and comment period modeled in part on the federal government's rulemaking procedure...(with) a user vote at the end of the process."

The points he tried to drive home the most: that Facebook members have extensive control over their personal information and that Facebook does not allow advertisers access to "personally identifiable" data in the Facebook Ads program.

Kelly also included a general mea culpa of sorts: "Perhaps because our site has developed so quickly, Facebook may have sometimes been inartful in communicating with our users and the general public about our advertising products," he stated. "We learned many lessons about the importance of user education and extensive control from the imperfect introduction of our Beacon product in 2007. As a result, Facebook continues to be dedicated to empowering consumers to control their information in both the noncommercial and the commercial context because we believe that should be the future of advertising."

A few other interesting tidbits from Kelly's remarks: out of Facebook's 200-million-plus active users, about 65 million are in the U.S.; more than 10,000 sites are using the Facebook Connect universal log-in product; and Facebook plans to continue the discussion-and-feedback-period strategy on any future changes to its "critical site documents."

[thisnamestoolong]

I am so tired of everyone talking about privacy on Facebook -- there is none!! You don't have to have a Facebook page, and if you do, you are going out of your way to make that information public! That is precisely the point! Has our society as a whole gone mad?

[loose_screw]

Agreed, just don't put stuff out there that you don't want people to know. There is no such thing as privacy on the internet.

[zclayton2]

Not mad, just collectively brain dead. if you put the onformation on the page, why would you then try to calim privacy over it? I have a facebook page, I don't put stuff on it that I don't want shared around.

[todd3617]

I don't see a problem with the ad system facebook has. The ads are based on what you put in on your page. On my page it says I like Lost. So I get lost ads. Who cares!

[calculatorwatch]

targeted ads never bother me, in fact, i kindof enjoy it when gmail misinterprets what you are talking about and gives you targeted ads that are completely unrelated

there is one exception though: when i'm single every ad facebook gives me is for one of those dating sites or a "meet sexy singles" thing. 1st of all, i know i'm single thanks for rubbing it in my face facebook, 2nd can't they target me with different ads based on the fact that i never click on those?

[leliathomas]

People are often very unrealistically frightened when it comes to online advertisements. The only thing you should be frightened of when it comes to online ads is going insane from seeing all the ********. (Tip: Use Firefox. Download Adblock Plus. Note, though, you sadly have to disable it to use FB.) Even if there were real privacy concerns--of which there aren't, really--people really need to wake up, be realistic and realize how unimportant most everyone is. Who cares if some random paper-pushing drone has some information on you, an unimportant stranger among many? I digress.

What gets me riled up about Facebook is how poorly it does advertise to me. I am engaged, and boy does Facebook know it. HERE, HAVE A WEDDING. HERE, LOSE WEIGHT NOW SO YOU CAN FIT INTO THAT WEDDING DRESS, CHUBBY. HERE, BUY THESE INVITATIONS. HERE, RINGS. IT LOOKS LIKE YOU'RE PLANNING A PARTY! And so and so on. I've taken to marking the "lose weight" ones as offensive (for the record, I'm a skinny chick), as the whole emotive junk used in them is disgusting. ("Fit into the dress for your lover")

Facebook's ads are just as poorly targeted as all the rest, really, because they can't judge much about people, excepting hard facts. For that reason, FB can advertise wedding and wedding-related things to me, but it undoubtedly struggles when it gets to my other, abnormal profile entries. For the scripts, this is confusing, and I get advertised a lot of random crap because of it.

Oh well. I'm on Twitter mostly these days. Facebook Connect is nice, though....

[leliathomas]

I do so hate being censored, CNET! Since apparently this site's for kids, I'll revise: "bull honky."

[Nancy R]

www.savejordan.net has been closed down TWICE by EX-PARTE court order and has fought for two years in court and the owner, Nancy Rolfe is currently under the threat of incarceration. There is no kiddie porn or juvenile court prive documents on the site. When is C-NET going to do a story on this case!!! Facebook should not have to answer to anyone about their advertising. They OWN the site. If anyone doesn't like their advertising they also have the freedom to find a new place to post their info. Our forefathers fought for our freedom of speech. Everyone should be fighting for their first amendment rights for all. Today it is www.savejordan.net and Facebook. Tomorrow it will be the rest of America if we are not careful. The first Amendment issue must be fought for zealously. The fact that Facebook being forced in a position to defend their 'own site' is a travesty and against the 1st amendment?

[Orion Blastar]

Google for "adblock plus" for Firefox and "adblock pro" for Intertnet Explorer and install those add-ons to remove the annoying Facebook advertising. Some of them go to web sites that install a virus or have some "get rich quick using Google" scam that they won't give you the details to how to get rich unless you pay for a membership or books etc.