I hadn't seen it when I first was getting my sea legs on facebook but maybe it was because I didn't have the kinds of friends that were terribly popular ... but now that I do I am seeing an endemic occurence of faux tagging, I suspect (still unconfirmed) that it has been without the informed consent of the tagee. What do I mean by this? Well, for those not familiar with facebook and/or flickr (or other photo sharing/storing sites/software) you can tag someone in a picture by having some software identify a piece of the picture as a face or person and then you "tag" it by saying who that person is.
All well and good. What I've seen happening of late though is pictures that do not have any people on them that are tagged, or advertisements that do not have the person tagged are tagged with their name. Now, I am guessing that some will track the tags down and ask them to be removed (or even remove them themselves though I would concede that this may not always be possible); however, even if they are removed, there is no notification for that is there? I would hope that there was since then I wouldn't have to look at a set of photos that no longer has the tag.
Tagged photos only show up on my facebook because someone that I cared about was tagged in a photo and if they weren't in the photo and it has nothing to do with them, then I feel cheated and think that whoever did this was underhanded and their gimmick is really bound to backfire. It seems like a silly idea anyway - why should I trust any ad that got to me through subterfuge? And, in fact, I am going to avoid these companies like the plague and tell my friends about their misbehavior.
Maybe there is renumeration involved for the hits on the photos, especially the ones with ads, and then I blame the idiots in the advertising or marketing firms that are paying this renumeration without realizing that potential consumers are ready to hit a "You stink" button if one was available before exiting the page. Not the mood that you want to put the customer in. And if the company realizes it but goes along with it, or instigated it itself, then my opinion of them drops even lower.
An even lower use of tagging, which I hope I do not see but could happen is malicious tagging where someone or something is tagged with someone else's moniker on purpose. Misdemeanor? Proving intent? Can I lock my photos so that once tagged no one can add a tag to them? I'm still new enough to this space that I don't know all the answers but I'll work on finding out. I don't want to see anyone a needless victim of mistagging, friend or not.
Now to someone who really wants me to look at something - send me a message!! Don't try to trick me into looking at something that you think is cool but is really not connected with the tagged person. I'm okay with tagging a poster for an event that you are closely involved with but if you tag me for something so that I'll look at it or so that someone else looks at it, then I really wish you would send me a message instead or, if looking for a mass audience, explain what it is via text and why we should take a look at it.
