29th March 2012

3 notes 

A nice image

EDIT: Less than an hour after this post went live, Mike at Nerve reached out to me to apologize. This post has also been featured on The Consumerist. Here’s his note: Hi, I saw your tweet and tumblr, and wanted to reach out. I apologize that you were taken by surprise when you saw your photo on Nerve.  We absolutely did not intend to use your photo without your permission.  I know other dating sites have used non-users without their permission but we are only using photos of actual members who have not opted out.  But obviously, we should reevaluate how we go about that.  Lesson learned for us.   Rest assured that your photo is being taken down as I type this.  Again, I’m sorry that it wasn’t more clear to you that your photo might be used.   If you ever want to chat more, you can reach me here or on my cell at <redacted>. —————- The point that needs to be made here is that websites that we trust with our information should ask before sharing this kind of information before just assuming it’s okay to go willy-nilly with it. Facebook had a very similar problem a couple of years ago. Treat your users more like people and less like assets, and they’ll be your fan forever. “Shoot first and ask questions later” isn’t a very good mantra in real life, and it certainly isn’t a good one digitally speaking. I hope that Nerve and other similar sites take note of this. ORIGINAL POST: So, there are all these horror stories floating around the Internet about people who find themselves in social advertisements via the assets they’ve contributed through their online profiles. They seem sort of funny and almost unreal. And then it happened to me. A friend of mine in Chicago found my image, twinned with this tampon story (of all the things in the world). I signed up for a Nerve.com profile a few months ago, and stopped using it after about a week because of it’s neutered functionality, and the fact that it seemed like diet OKCupid. To be honest, I just forgot about the thing. Until now. Obviously. When I signed up, they didn’t make it clear (AT ALL) that my face and profile could be used as advertising imagery. Upon visiting “settings”, I was able to see that a box had been checked to make my face usable in advertising. Users should be able to opt out of these services easily, and it should be made clear from the get go that their imagery could be used like this. I promptly deleted my Nerve account. Although I should’ve been more careful, no company should bury the fact that they’re doing this. And while I’d expect this to happen with networks like Facebook and Google+, an online dating site? Really? While I personally don’t care, given the stigma that sometimes exists with online dating, why would Nerve consider embarrassing its users? And on top of that - serving my face to a girl in Chicago? Hey Nerve, I think your advertising tracking is probably off a little bit. Just by a few states and a time zone. No big deal. Lesson learned.

EDIT: Less than an hour after this post went live, Mike at Nerve reached out to me to apologize. This post has also been featured on The Consumerist. Here’s his note:

Hi,

I saw your tweet and tumblr, and wanted to reach out. I apologize that you were taken by surprise when you saw your photo on Nerve.  We absolutely did not intend to use your photo without your permission.  I know other dating sites have used non-users without their permission but we are only using photos of actual members who have not opted out.  But obviously, we should reevaluate how we go about that.  Lesson learned for us.  
Rest assured that your photo is being taken down as I type this.  Again, I’m sorry that it wasn’t more clear to you that your photo might be used.  
If you ever want to chat more, you can reach me here or on my cell at <redacted>.
—————-
The point that needs to be made here is that websites that we trust with our information should ask before sharing this kind of information before just assuming it’s okay to go willy-nilly with it. Facebook had a very similar problem a couple of years ago. Treat your users more like people and less like assets, and they’ll be your fan forever. “Shoot first and ask questions later” isn’t a very good mantra in real life, and it certainly isn’t a good one digitally speaking. I hope that Nerve and other similar sites take note of this.


ORIGINAL POST:

So, there are all these horror stories floating around the Internet about people who find themselves in social advertisements via the assets they’ve contributed through their online profiles. They seem sort of funny and almost unreal.

And then it happened to me.

A friend of mine in Chicago found my image, twinned with this tampon story (of all the things in the world). I signed up for a Nerve.com profile a few months ago, and stopped using it after about a week because of it’s neutered functionality, and the fact that it seemed like diet OKCupid. To be honest, I just forgot about the thing.

Until now. Obviously.

When I signed up, they didn’t make it clear (AT ALL) that my face and profile could be used as advertising imagery. Upon visiting “settings”, I was able to see that a box had been checked to make my face usable in advertising. Users should be able to opt out of these services easily, and it should be made clear from the get go that their imagery could be used like this.

I promptly deleted my Nerve account. Although I should’ve been more careful, no company should bury the fact that they’re doing this. And while I’d expect this to happen with networks like Facebook and Google+, an online dating site? Really? While I personally don’t care, given the stigma that sometimes exists with online dating, why would Nerve consider embarrassing its users?

And on top of that - serving my face to a girl in Chicago? Hey Nerve, I think your advertising tracking is probably off a little bit. Just by a few states and a time zone. No big deal.

Lesson learned.

  1. brianvan said: “Centipedes? In my dating profile? It’s more likely than you think”
  2. misterdisco posted this