Facebook made minor changes in few terms and it was enough to start a controversy across the world so much so that it was to be referred to Federal Trade Commission.
When it really started ?
On Feb 4, the day Facebook celebrated 5 years of existence they also brought a change in their terms of service agreement.
It seemed to have gone unnoticed until the Consumerist site published an article on Sunday saying the new terms allow the social network to “do anything they want with your content, forever.”
Terms in question?
One issue with that version was a clause which says that Facebook owns your personal data indefinitely, even if you delete your own account.
You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.
Another issue was a line saying that Facebook owned licensing rights to content on sites that let users share information back to Facebook.
You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.
End-result:
Few days of uproar by users the Facebook has reverted to their old terms of service agreement and is asking for suggestion from its users to points to be added in terms page.
The company says it plans to introduce a new new version, written in “language everyone can understand.” It is also asking for user feedback in a Facebook group it has set up, accommodatingly titled the “Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities.”
One thing is for sure that Facebook wants to update their terms badly and leverage the huge mine of data which it holds.
This could also have been a precursor to a deal with Microsoft in the search domain to search Facebook database or to launch a full fledge search engine on Facebook with more weightage on social search.
Bigger question it poses?
As Mark Zuckerberg pointed out in Facebook blog that Facebook today is not just a small site but a full fledge nation because if the Facebook users are added up it would be sixth most populated country in the world this tells us the sheer size of the social networks and especially the bigger ones who are getting bigger day-by-day. It even edges out the U.S television audience for Super Bowl XLIII, which drew a record-setting 152 million eyeballs.
At the same time it arouses the bigger picture of privacy concerns in today’s cyberaholic world because what a user do today on social networks is archived and if used for public search could possibly create problems for that user in the future.
The social networks are trying to leverage the user generated content which they hold in terms of status updates, photos, videos and other private memorabilia of their users and many social search engines which are cropping up if tomorrow hitch up a back door deal with these social networks then the users privacy will be in jeopardy.
There are many indications that these social networks want to do away with their closed gate policy in order to gain more spectrum in their domain. In order to avoid privacy concerns government might have to make special laws for online social networks due to the size it caters to and the importance it has in people’s life and privacy.
Whats your take on this privacy issue? Do you think your data is safe on these social networks? We would love to hear from you..
I just can’t believe they went back on their TOS change. People are dumb if they think they are getting any privacy from Facebook or Myspace. All they are doing is voluntarily supplying valuable info to huge marketing mills. Although there are ways to communicate with privacy: anonymous sites like http://www.anonboard.com
Sadly, most people would not have looked closely enough to notice the change in Facebook’s Terms of Service… looks them social networkers are doing a good job of looking out for each other