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When it comes to advertising, Facebook has long maintained that it can freely use a person’s name, photo, comments and other information in advertising as long as it shows the ad only to people who already have rights to see the underlying information. For example, if you compliment Starbucks’ pumpkin spice latte in a post that can theoretically be viewed by your Facebook friends, the coffee company can pay Facebook to broadcast that comment to all of your friends to improve the chances that they see it.

That kind of advertising, known as a sponsored story, is valuable to advertisers because it looks like a product endorsement from a trusted friend rather than a traditional ad.

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– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/technology/personaltech/ftc-looking-into-facebook-privacy-policy.html?ref=todayspaper