Facebook have done it again. In its attempts to make itself a quick buck it has run roughshod over its users. This time it isn’t about privacy concerns or about claiming in ads that people have used features which they haven’t. This time they are adding links to pages which the page admins have not added and cannot remove.

A good friend of mine is releasing an animated short film this year called “A Small Exposition“. I’m sure he thought that it would be a good idea to create a Facebook Page so that his friends could keep up to date on it. Perhaps he was hoping that through the power of social networking more and more people would find out about his short film and want to check it out. This all seems like a good idea.

Facebook must have decided to get in on the action. Down in the links section there is a second link that appears which doesn’t seem to relate to the subject at hand. Can you see which one it is?

Yes friends, Facebook have stooped so low as to include an advert for a Weight Loss Diet in the links section of the page. Creator of the page and all around good guy Pete Foley said via Twitter, “Yeah I have no idea where that came from. I can’t remove it either. It makes it look like I put it there myself. It’s baaad.” (source here and here)

I can understand that Facebook need to raise revenue to fund the service. They have adverts right down the right hand side of just about every page on Facebook. It seems that this wasn’t enough for them and they have had to go to the lengths of adding unremovable links to people’s pages in order to raise some more funding. Imagine if this was on a page about an eating disorder and how distasteful that would be.

So what is next for Facebook? Inserting wall posts into my profile with advertisements? Would they do this to the page of a multinational company? I do have to wonder. Ethics seem to have gone by the wayside in 2011.