How to opt out of being Facebook’s corporate shill with privacy ad settings

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Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg: One face we’d prefer not to be in our ads. Credit: Peter Foley / EPA

Social-media websites are trying to evolve advertising as quickly as they have online communication. Social news sites Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon all are experimenting with user-ranked ads.

Facebook is taking a different approach by sticking your mugshot directly into your friends’ sponsored posts.

Your digital endorsement is only supposed to kick in with your ‘relevant social actions.’ But a mix-up last week had third-party Facebook apps randomly serving ads with users’ faces.

Buried in the social network’s privacy settings is the ability to opt out of being a corporate shill.

If you don’t want to lend your identity to Facebook’s ad program, log onto the website, go to News Feed and Wall ad tab in privacy settings and set ‘appearance in Facebook ads’ to ‘no one.’

There. Doesn’t it feel good not to involuntarily endorse things?

-- Mark Milian

Follow my random thoughts on technology, the Internet and Web start-ups on Twitter @mmilian.