Facebook blasts away rumors regarding relaxation in advertising policies and user photos

There were rumors that were heard in the last few days that Facebook has relaxed its advertising policies that would allow and give advertisers the freedom to use and incorporate Facebook users’ photos. In the last month, it was revealed that a couple of Facebook platfrom advertising networks were suspended owing to the fact that the ad networks were providing data of the Facebook users in a manner that were violating Facebook’s privacy policy. As you can imagine, it was necessary to Facebook to clarify these rumors, and that is exactly what facebook has done. Facebook came out and said:

The advertisements that started these rumors were not from Facebook but placed within applications by third parties. Those ads violated our policies by misusing profile photos, and we already required the removal of those deceptive ads from third-party applications before this rumor began spreading.

We are as concerned as many of you are about any potential threat to your experience on Facebook and the protection of your privacy. That’s why we prohibit ads on Facebook Platform that cause a bad user experience, are misleading, or otherwise violate our policies. Along with removing ads, we’ve recently prohibited two entire advertising networks from providing services to applications on Facebook Platform because they were not compliant with our policies and failed to correct their practices.