[aaronbasssett]

They do have permission though. The people used granted permission when they submitted their face to uifaces.com, in fact they even went so far as to submit their faces to the "authorised" section on uifaces

> those awesome folks allow their faces to be used on live products

They might not have ever imagined that their faces would be used in this manner, but they did give their permission.

[Silhouette]

If you read further down the Twitter feed, it's clear that this particular person didn't think she'd granted such permission, and the whole setup looks questionable on other grounds as well.

Putting someone's face next to suggestions of serious problems like drug abuse or STIs on a public site without their knowledge or explicit consent at least raises ethical questions, and then trying to argue that it's obviously a joke when apparently the person in question has been receiving concerned mail from friends who didn't know that makes it pretty clear that any joke has gone too far. The dismissive attitude of the site developer just makes it worse.

[aaronbasssett]

I did read the entire thread, the site developer offered two different solutions. But the other commenters seemed to dismiss both suggestions, preferring to fetch their pitchforks instead.

[ricardobeat]

His “solution” would be to hack it to avoid that specific person's image, which is not really solving anything, other than the site author’s own problem.

The footer of uifaces still says _mockups_ and the FAQ/TOS haven’t been available for a while. This is clearly playing legal sword fighting and unethical.

[Silhouette]

I'm not sure I'd consider anything he suggested a good solution, though.

What he's done, and the aggressive/dismissive way he's handled a perfectly reasonable request afterwards, are what very expensive defamation lawsuits are made of. That is as it should be, IMHO, given that notwithstanding the developer's personal opinions about visitors understanding, the consequences of his actions demonstrably did reach someone close to the person whose photo was used and cause real distress and concern.

[paulcole]

> Putting someone's face next to suggestions of serious problems like drug abuse or STIs on a public site without their knowledge or explicit consent at least raises ethical questions

This was the plot of a Friends episode like 20 years ago. Joey's face is used in a herpes ad in the subway.

I think he got paid but the issue is the same. Give someone carte blanche to use your likeness and there might be some negative consequences.

[Silhouette]

Give someone carte blanche to use your likeness and there might be some negative consequences.

But clearly in this case the lady didn't believe she'd given carte blanche to use her likeness even in such an obviously offensive manner, as she repeatedly mentions only expecting it to be used in mockups.

Moreover, such evidence as anyone has linked to from that Twitter feed seems to support her side of the story more than his so far. There is no explicit licence available anywhere that I can see, apparently there used to be some sort of separate area where people offered their photos for production use as well, but that no longer seems to exist, the FAQ no longer seems to be working, and there's no indication that this particular lady's photo was in that section.

In any case, the onus is definitely on the guy whose site is posting her photo next to that kind of content to justify his actions here. It doesn't take a genius to realise that this could seriously upset someone even if he is covered legally, and so far it's not even clear that he is covered legally. As I said in another comment, this is what very expensive defamation lawsuits are made of.