Gym posted photos of me on Facebook

[DomesticDisgrace]

I recently joined a small gym/training studio very local to me and I have 33 mutual Facebook friends with this gym as it's a smallish town and the PTs there are very involved in the local community, children's sport club said etc.

I had my first PT session today, purposely because I was advised it would be quiet and I was feeling very self conscious etc. It went really well and I booked and paid for my next session before leaving.

I've just logged onto Facebook and the first thing on my timeline is 4 photos by the gym page of me, mid session, red contorted face, dripping with sweat, one where my mum tum has escaped my leggings and looks to be flying off like a fleshy jelly spaceship! There are lots of comments, some just of people tagging their friends which I take as a pisstake, others along the lines of "any step is a step in the right direction".

I'm fucking mortified and fuming! I've messaged them asking them to remove them and had no reply

Well done for getting out there and exercising OP! You've more balls than I have!

Hopefully you find somewhere to get fitter without having to dodge the cameras. Bastards.

zoya - do you have any evidence to back up that claim? That they ONLY took them down on threat of legal action. Of course the OP may have threatened legal action but unless she first approached them and they refused and then she threatened legal action you're making things up!

I'm absolutely furious on your behalf! Put in a formal complaint and request your money back.

Good luck with finding somewhere new.

Can we dispense with all the what ifs? What if she had MH problems,?What if she was anorexic? What if she was on the run from the police! None of these things are relevant to this situation.

CastIronCookware there's a big difference between agreeing to a publicity shot / testimonial (both of which will be signed off by you) and someone taking pictures of you without your permission and posting them on Facebook

God I would hate this. I go to the gym to be in my own little bubble among others who are sweating away in their own little bubbles.

lemons

From the OP at 18.49:

They replied first of all saying how great I did and the photos will encourage others (obviously looking to appeal to the overweight and insecure so!)

I went ballistic and threatened legal action (more cringe) and they've been deleted. So many people and mutual friends have already seen though and I have paid for the next session but I never want to step foot back there again!

I think causality is pretty heavily implied if not explicitly confirmed. I'm sure OP could do so if she wished.

angelica I know - I was responding to the outrage about the national gym chain that another poster mentions which terms include being photographed or a higher membership fee is applied.
I'm genuinely surprised that people didn't know this is standard business practice.

If you look at the small print of most entry and event tickets (theme parks, festivals etc), that includes agreeing to your image being used - including being sold to third parties - too.

To all the people that think this is no big deal and it's been sorted now the photos are down are obviously the type that either genuinely don't care what others think or don't seem to realise what a huge breach of privacy posting pics of people without their consent is.

Not everyone in the world is confidence and sometimes stepping out their comfort zone takes a certain enough of effort. Something which one person thinks is no big deal can be the thing that makes another stop. I know people who've had abuse yelled at them while trying to start running and luckily they were the type of person to not let it affect them. Gyms are meant to be a safe zone with like minded people, to me this is as bad as those people who took pics of people unaware to shame them ( the model who took that pic of the older lady in the shower springs to mind), but instead of a random it's the gym, trying to drum up their business using pictures in their words to encourage others. If they genuinely thought that why couldn't they have asked the OP if that was ok, she was only a few meters from them!!

Personally social media has led to a lot of eradication of privacy but it's so stealthy no one questions it and how dangerous it is!

My gym posts pictures on instagram and Facebook, at times I have been in the background of some of them at times there have been shots of me exercising (shock horror).

Yes, but the key question here is - did you know that they uploaded pictures? Did they ask permission or did they just put them up anyway when you didn't know?
You're on dodgy ground as a business if you just assume.

That's awful. A total invasion of privacy. I can't believe they do that without gaining consent.

People at work get het up enough about their professionally shot headshots which appear on our company intranet, never mind a sweaty gym shot!

I stopped using a gym because of this. I think it is disgraceful, you are invading people's privacy!

4691 - I know they take pictures at the gym but I don't know if I am going to be in one if that makes sense.

People are really weird about pictures, it's as if people think they are invisible in everyday life and are only seen by others if a picture is taken. Hundreds, if not thousands of people see you each and every day, they even see your children! Yet the moment people take a picture all hell breaks loose. I understand that this situation is not quite like that as the OP was in the gym rather than the street but it seems that there is something about pictures that makes people react very strongly and overreact in my opinion in some circumstances.

"Hundreds, if not thousands of people see you each and every day, they even see your children"

Do they come up and laugh at people and their children or post laughing smiley stickers on them. Not comparable.

Did they ask permission or did they just put them up anyway when you didn't know?

It's often/usually included in the T&Cs of use - no assumptions; the customer has entered into a contract.

The OP will have agreed to T&Cs by paying for the session - full copy available on request. Thing is, who actually bothers to ask for a copy when paying for something like this?

I'd be livid!!

Gone are the days where you can just quietly go off and do stuff. Everything has to be splashed all over social media as some kind of big thing for people to pass comment on. It really fucking winds me up.

helenadove -

Do they come up and laugh at people and their children or post laughing smiley stickers on them. Not comparable.

Of course people look at and comment on people they see, they may also be unkind and laugh at them with friends. There are constant MN posts about people who have seen someone out and about and commenting on the way they looked or acted.

As I said previously they gym should have blocked comments on pics as the general public are often fairly unpleasant.

Sue the fuckers

Oh for goodness sake. It's a shame that you were not happy to have your pictures used but you complained and they remedied the issue. Aside from some embarrassment you felt there was no real harm and you suffered no loss. So quite what all these people banging on about 'taking it further' would want to happen is beyond me.

Anyone with an ounce of sense or an ounce of experience with the internet would know how that would pan out. She should be furious. They humiliated her and let strangers laugh at her where her friends could see.

lemonsandlimes how do you know the op has no m|h? People don't write their whole story in one op.
It doesn't matter if she doesn't having pics put up and being humilated can cause harm to some people ( though obv not to you).
She should be able to work out without feeling insecure.

People are really weird about pictures, it's as if people think they are invisible in everyday life and are only seen by others if a picture is taken. Hundreds, if not thousands of people see you each and every day, they even see your children!
Yes, yet the betting is the person won't be doing something where they are already feeling insecure, not looking their best then having the picture plastered on facebook where they know people they know and people in their local area will see.
Somewhat different..

God, social media creates so much drama, doesn't it? If you're so insecure about how you look, maybe just delete your facebook account. There's more to life

Do you not understand how Facebook works? Even in OP didn't have a Facebook profile, her pictures would still be all over this gyms F/book page for everyone to see.

This is horrible and OP has the right to be furious. If this was done to me I'm fairly sure I'd never exercise outside of my home again. Before you say that's extreme, I have anxiety issues and don't use social media/put my photo online - but the point is that there are lots of reasons people might not want this to happen and the gym should have the decency to ask.

Poor you op. That is awful of the gym. Utter dicks. Complain lots and get all money back.

I suspect they probably have it as part of their terms and conditions that they can use photos for promotion. If they do and the Op and signed it, then she's not going to get anywhere with threatening them with legal action, and if she hasn't said that they can't, then she hasn't really got a right to be angry with anyone else other than herself for not reading them.

I wouldn't like it either, but it's something I've seen not infrequently in terms and conditions.
But people generally don't read terms and conditions. I read through (7 pages of it!) something from the council and queried various bits of it (terms and conditions were clearly written in California and hadn't been altered to the English market, which I thought was bad considering it was our local council) and after a few questions the chap said rather plaintively that no one had queried it before, having spoken to other people who had just signed it without looking at terms and conditions they were rather horrified at what they'd signed.