Facebook: What Have You Become?
by Mike on Feb.17, 2009, under Computer, Irritated, Technology
MySpace. Just hearing that word makes me shutter. A few years ago, I drank the MySpace kool-aid and created a page of my own. It was the coolest thing since sliced bread. But then I realized just how trashy the site had become. More than half of the site had become riddled with ads. And if I should spend the hour or so to Ad-Block all of the images and text ads, I was left with a horrible shell of a site that had more white spaces on it than any site I’ve ever seen.
So, I decided to give Facebook a try. It has far less ads and had a more promising interface and API. However, after learning from my roommate that they had changed their Terms of Service, I have a different opinion of them. According to a post on Consumerist, Facebook now claims that by uploading content to their servers, you are granting them the right to use your content for whatever they want, indefinitely. They don’t need your permission to do so. Here’s the best part: if you close your account, or even if you delete content from your page, they still keep a backup of the content to use whenever they want. This angers me. A lot. So much, in fact, that I may be soon closing my Facebook and demanding that they remove my content from their servers, unless they want a fight.
Why is this an issue for me? Well, besides the obvious fact that Facebook is essentially stealing my intellectual property (stealing, according to Merriam-Webster is “to take surreptitiously or without permission.” Me uploading to your site is NOT giving you the right to backup my content for your own personal use whenever you feel like it!), they are doing it behind users’ backs. According to their privacy policy, if they make changes to their Terms of Service or Privacy Policy, they will either notify users at the top of the Privacy Policy page, via email, or their homepage. Let me tell you, a change like this can’t be contained to a freakin’ tiny line at the top of the Privacy Policy (which, by the way, has an effective date well before the aforementioned changes). If this is the kind of company Facebook is turning into, I want nothing to do with them.
Though I haven’t made a true decision, I am going to be reviewing content on my profile, and if need be, demanding in writing, that the content has been removed. For your own sake, look through your profile for any content that you wouldn’t want Facebook using as if it were their own, and remove it, and write them to make sure that it really is gone. And from now on, make SURE that you really want your content submitted to Facebook before you post it.
Todd, though I might not have agreed with your position on some of the aspects of the new facebook layout, I can see why you are timid of Facebook! Facebook, you are headed down a dark path!
February 17th, 2009 on 1:33 am
yeah, I was pretty offset to hear of these recent changes, too. I might at least write them (if I knew where to send an e-mail too!) and tell them that I don’t agree with the changes and urge them to reconsider.
February 17th, 2009 on 4:58 pm
Oh noes, Mike, they’re out to sell your pictures and make a profit!
But in all seriousness, I think you’re being a little paranoid about this. Remember, they had all that in their TOS before, the only change to it was the addition of the clause allowing them to keep it indefinitely. I don’t know why you’re more upset about it now than you were before, because things haven’t changed terribly much.
The addition of that clause isn’t so they could make a profit selling your pictures. It’s there because someone might notice that a message or a wall post sent to someone else lingered around after they deleted their account, and thought they could make some money by suing Facebook. They’re just covering their ass.
Also, it’s important to note that the terms are subject to your privacy settings. They can’t do much with anything you post as non-public.
But let’s pretend that’s not true. Let’s say that Facebook has the ability to do whatever they want with anything you post, regardless of any privacy settings. I really don’t care. I wouldn’t be able to make a dime off any of my pictures, I doubt they could do much better. If I could, I would certainly never post them to Facebook in the first place. I would also never post anything that I wanted to keep absolutely private. If you trust anything other than a face-to-face conversation as a secure medium, then you’re being naive.
What’s the bottom line? Don’t post anything to the internet that you don’t want up there forever. That has been true for some time, and it is still true. Facebook’s TOS modifications don’t change that.