Are Facebook Photo Fears Overblown?

The web is overflowing with opinions about Facebook's Terms of Service when it comes to what they can do with photos that you upload to the service. I blogged about it here, but the short version is they can legally do whatever they want with your photos.

Google+ has similar terms, as do other photo sharing services, but Facebook is the big cheese in all of this. The terms are unfavorable, and I don't know a single photographer that thinks they're fair. Nevertheless, if you have a business and are not taking advantage of Facebook, you should be. It's hard to ignore a free service with more than 750 million active users.

Then I began to wonder, are there any examples out there of Facebook selling or using someone's photo? I went on line to check and found nothing. Not a single example of the thing we fear most about their Terms of Service. There's one example of a man recognizing his wife's pic on a meet singles ad, but that was the fault of a 3rd party, not Facebook. The ad was removed.

Facebook also uses profile pics to get you to connect with a particular person, or to show you who's available to chat. While not "ads," they are technically "using" your profile photo. As far as actually selling of your photo, which their terms say they have the right to do, I've been unable to find one example.

This is not to say that I find their terms are acceptable. Many may say "whether or not they've done it isn't the point," which is very true. They can do it. I'm just wondering if the have done it.