Facebook removed an advertiser this week. In a swift and very public move, Facebook permanently deleted advertising from an affiliate marketing website promoting Internet dating sites, ionechat.com/. Registered to an office in Luxemburg, ionechat.com advertised in over 35 countries, including Canada and the United States. The two page website provided information and links to Internet dating sites, receiving payment each time a visitor it drove to a dating site purchased an account. Ads for the affiliate site were removed from Facebook for using images of a beautiful young woman named Rehtaeh Parsons alongside text reading, “Find love in Canada”. It was an unforgivable error made by an inexperienced webmaster, a mistake that cost him his business.
In April of this year Rehtaeh Parsons committed suicide. She was 17 years old. Two years earlier, she had been raped by four classmates at a party. Images of her rape circulated throughout her high school via text message, eventually ending up online. An initial investigation did not result in any criminal charges being laid against anyone. As the police investigation closed, Rehtaeh Parsons’ life became intolerable. Her rapists walked the same city streets she did. Images of her naked body, of her rape, continued to circulate online. She was taunted by classmates and by others around the world. She tried to defend herself online which only made the cyber-bullying worse. It was an everyday constant. Her peers joined in. She was slut-shamed for being raped. This was the tone of the last two years of her life. She tried to go it alone, receding from friends, family and community. In April of this year, Rehtaeh Parsons was dead.
The police reopened their investigation and now two 18-year old men await trial on charges relating to the distribution of child pornography. Rehtaeh’s parents have become spokespersons for anti-bullying efforts, most recently appearing on the Dr. Phil show to talk about protecting children in cyberspace and social media. In Canada it is a well known story and Rehtaeh’s face a well known image. She was the third highly public suicide caused by cyber-bullying in Canada.
On Tuesday, a middle aged man in Toronto was shocked to see at least two different images of Rehtaeh’s face used to advertise ionechat.com in his Facebook feed. He reported the ads to Facebook which resulted in their immediate removal. A spokesperson for Facebook Canada, Meg Sinclair confirmed to the Globe and Mail newspaper that Facebook will no longer run ads from ionechat.com, ever.
Facebook wasn’t at fault. When notified that an online dating website was using the image of a deceased minor in Facebook ads, the company revoked the dating service’s account and says it will not give it back. Facebook has clear language in its advertising policies outlining what is and is not acceptable content and behaviour. Facebook is also clear in the steps it can take to enforce its policies.
- Ads may not contain content that exploits political agendas or “hot button” issues for commercial use.
- Ads must not offend users.
- Ads must not violate the rights of any third parties.
Dating
- Ads for adult friend finders or dating sites with a sexual emphasis are not permitted. Ads for other online dating services must adhere to the dating targeting requirements and the name of the product or service must be included in the ad text or image.
- Ads, or categories of ads, that receive a significant amount of negative user feedback, or are otherwise deemed to violate our community standards, are prohibited and may be removed. In all cases, Facebook reserves the right in its sole discretion to determine whether particular content is in violation of our community standards.
Harassment
- Ads may not insult, attack, harass, bully, threaten, demean or impersonate others.
Rights of Others
- Ads may not include content that infringes upon or violates the rights of any third party, including copyright, trademark, privacy, publicity, or other personal or proprietary rights.
- We reserve the right to reject, approve or remove any ad for any reason, in our sole discretion, including ads that negatively affect our relationship with our users or that promote content, services, or activities, contrary to our competitive position, interests, or advertising philosophy. These guidelines are subject to change at any time.
These are just snippets showing the specific terms we believe the online dating advertiser violated. There are dozens more. Most Internet users don’t read the terms and conditions. The affiliate marketer behind ionechat.com probably didn’t.
This is not the first story about a social media advertising outrage. Anyone publishing content to the Internet is now a mainstream publisher. It is so easy and so fast and so, mistakes get made with frequency. Most often, these mistakes are made by people who either don’t know or don’t care to know about the basic rules of how things work. As digital media marketers, what bothers us most is how such mistakes are further indicators of a race towards the bottom when it comes to creating web content.
In this case, the mistake was made by an inexperienced webmaster. In a statement to Global News, Anh Dung, the affiliate marketer who ran ionechat.com said,
“The website is no longer working because I shut it down, I feel so guilty when I think of it and I don’t want to run it anymore, it’s just a simple site with 2 pages that I use to promote dating offer to make some money. I did not expect it to cause serious consequences. I feel very sorry for my mistake. I’m so stressed right now so I can’t talk anymore.”
Dung admits to scraping images from Google search. That he came across Rehtaeh Parsons’ image doing a Google image search was cold hearted bad luck. No matter how he came across it, that he used it was an amateur’s mistake as Dung does not have rights to use the image commercially.
This is a bitter story but it is what happens when marketers and entrepreneurs forget the responsibilities that come with being a mainstream publisher. There are rules of commerce, just as there are rules of decency. Quite often the two realms are quite similar. Knowing that is the mark of a professional organization. Not knowing the rules is the mark of an untrained and inexperienced operator.
Business operators are urged to examine the experience of their in-house or third-party marketing teams. In previous years, allowances were made for mistakes on the Web but those days are ending. The Internet is now the common space and, as with all public spaces, there are legalities and rules of decorum that simply must be followed in order to provide a professional service.
I’m willing to take Anh Dung at his word. He made a terrible mistake which has emotional repercussions that he could not have possibly understood when he was scraping images of Canadian women from Google image search. The economic damage was done to his own enterprise, not to a client.
Nevertheless, his mistake stands as a cautionary tale to everyone responsible for information published to the Internet. The Internet is a professional business environment.
Image Credit: iStockPhoto - gmutlu
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