Facebook apologizes for dating website ad featuring photo of Rehtaeh Parsons

[n2doc]

HALIFAX - Facebook apologized Tuesday for featuring an ad for a dating website that used a picture of Rehtaeh Parsons, the 17-year-old Nova Scotia girl who died after attempting suicide in April.

A spokesperson for the company, who did not want to be named, issued a statement late Tuesday that said the ad was a "gross violation" of the company's policies and has been removed.

"This is an extremely unfortunate example of an advertiser scraping an image from the Internet and using it in their ad campaign," the spokesperson said in the emailed statement.

"This is a gross violation of our ad policies and we have removed the ad and permanently deleted the advertiser's account.

"We apologize for any harm this has caused."



Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Facebook+apologizes+dating+website+featuring+photo+Rehtaeh/8925060/story.html

[mercuryblues]

1. FB must be trying

to clean up its act. They even permanently deleted the advertiser's account. Good for them.

[Posteritatis]

5. The company's even perma-blacklisted from doing business with FB, period, too

That's the kind of forceful response I like seeing with these kinds of fuckups.

The other company that scraped and ran the image in the first place dissolved itself, which means they're probably already seeing up under another name to try and repeat the stunt, but after something like this I'm skeptical that they'll go undiscovered if they do that.

[mercuryblues]

2. update

the dating site shut down. He will probably open a new on, under a new name. I think he will be careful of the images he uses in the future.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/canada/130918/retaeh-parsons-photo-facebook-dating-website-ionechat

The dating website ionechat.com has been shut down after it used images of dead Canadian girl Rehtaeh Parsons for its Facebook advertising.

Owner Anh Dung, who runs the site from Vietnam, told the Toronto Sun he didn’t realize whose photos he scraped from the Internet.

“I feel so guilty when I think of it and I don’t want to run it anymore,” Dung said, the Sun reported.

[Posteritatis]

3. To say this added some heat and light to the morning news here is putting it lightly.. (nt)

[seabeyond]

4. wow, this precious girl just keep being fucked, even in her death. dont we just LUV our social media