Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Reverts ToS Change After User Uproar
rarel writes "CNN and other media outlets report that Facebook reverted their TOS update and went back to using the previous one. 'The site posted a brief message on users' home pages that said it was returning to its previous "Terms of Use" policy "while we resolve the issues that people have raised."' Facebook's controversial changes to its Terms of Service, previously commented on Slashdot, included a mention that (users) 'may remove (their) User Content from the Site at any time. ... However, (they) acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of (their) User Content,' triggering a massive uproar from users and privacy groups."
I'll just stick to Friendface, thank you very much!
Unless team facebook is a bunch of utter morons, they knew that changing the TOS was likely to cause a stir(and, even if it didn't, it would cost a few lawyer hours). So, clearly, they had some reason for wanting to make the change. I'm guessing that that reason, whatever it is, didn't just vanish.
They'll probably just wait for the fuss to die down, reword it a bit, and try again. Outrage fatigue sets in quickly, as do acceptance, rationalization, and even embrace of the status quo.
An important precedent has been set. The uproar created by the community, including some people cancelling their Facebook memberships, caused the Terms of Service to be reverted. We must remember this. It should be a rallying cry: "Remember Facebook".
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Or boiling the frog. They tried ti implement a controversial change all at once, and it caused a kerfuffle. Now they will ease it in slowly.
I have the feeling that Zuckerberg's girlfriend wasn't real happy when he tried to introduce her to anal sex.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
So you're saying you don't want them to have backups of their systems?
Not being a facebook user I would find it amusing if a meteor took out their data center today and the site can't be restored on account of the ToS not allowing them to keep backups.
As in many cases with updated contracts (not even sure a ToS counts as a real contract), this is mostly just the paper being adjusted to reflect reality.
I suspect that keeping your content indefinitely is what already happens, and they were merely trying to update the TOS to reflect reality. And besides, if you delete stuff from there, how are you ever going to know if all the copies have gone from their computers? And are you expecting them to go through all of their old backup tapes and delete your data?
It's also important to remember that Facebook is a hugely popular website that makes no money whatsoever. Their basic business model is to sell your privacy and give you in return the website. They haven't worked out how to do it yet, so you can expect more stuff you don't like from Facebook at some point in the future.
You probably couldn't find the video because it violated the terms of use.
Heyooooooooo
Why don't they just modify the old TOS to say something along the lines of:
"When you delete your account, only your profile content will be deleted."
To cover the issues such as:
If you send a message to a user, and then you delete your account, they don't need to delete the message from you in that person's inbox
Or, if you submitted a picture via the graffiti app etc, they don't need to delete your entry on the other person's profile, etc.
Can I leave this box empty?
I didn't have a problem with them retaining phone book information, wall posts, ... my beef was with creative works uploaded. Their land grab on rights in perpetuity was insanity. They could use any image I had uploaded for any purpose including commercial and advertising without any compensation whatsoever. They could sell rights to their image database to publishers, the AP, and others without regard for privacy or payment to me.
I posted this last time, it seems that no one seems to understand that their ToS change is quite standard.
With respect to text or data entered into and stored by publicly-accessible site features such as forums, comments and bug trackers ("SourceForge Public Content"), the submitting user retains ownership of such SourceForge Public Content; with respect to publicly-available statistical content which is generated by the site to monitor and display content activity, such content is owned by SourceForge. In each such case, the submitting user grants SourceForge the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform, and display such Content (in whole or part) worldwide and/or to incorporate it in other works in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed , all subject to the terms of any applicable license.
Why the knee jerk reaction to facebook having the same policies as slashdot? If you delete your slashdot account, what do you think happens to all of your archived comments?
Why don't you lead?
----- You know you have ego issues when you register a domain in your name.
One can encrypt backups with keys that are "expire" (read: are thrown away) according to some schedule, so that they can have e.g. backups for the last year, but cannot read backups that are older than that. Should be pretty simple to set up, really.
HAND.
Think for a moment about the institution you're talking about: something deep-rooted for centuries, penetrating every aspect of western life.
Now think about Facebook. Not even a decade old, and easily replaced.
Which do you think is easier to change with less uproar? Don't magnify the response on Facebook out of proportions: you don't see congressional hearings, massive politicizing, years of debate, marches in front of mansions, and constant media coverage on this admittedly very minor issue.
In other words, the uproar over the banking industry IS THERE. The uproar over the housing crisis IS THERE. The uproar over the fundamentals of the American economy IS THERE. You're not addressing the sheeple you imagine.
You're grandstanding, and it shows, and it doesn't become you.
It was simple - they took the right to reproduce anything you posted - writing, photos, etc. It was non-exclusive. The key was that if you deleted something or left Facebook, those rights were terminated.
The change was that you could not terminate those rights by leaving; they were indefinite. The lawyer-speak used was not clear that the allowed use of your content on facebook was exclusively limited to facebook. Now, that's not a huge deal if you can terminate those rights should they attempt to abuse them. That's a big stick held by the content creator, even in light of the all-encompassing rights they took in order to operate their business (and, technically they needed nearly all those rights to generate the facebook pages without running afoul of copyright law).
By removing the revocation provision, they basically granted themselves perpetual rights to everything. That's a major change. The original TOS had some real safeguards in it, and I read them quite thoroughly when I signed up. This was, dare I say it, the lynchpin of those safeguards - a last, final way to undo what you had done.
Facebook has real copyright issues with the content they manage, and they don't want to set themselves up for a legal collapse. This change would have made the legal side very, very clean for them. And very unbalanced against members.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
So, Facebook changes its TOS to be clear that it might still have backups of your data around for a while, and people get MAD?!
You're wrong, and stupid too. The TOS said that not only could they keep backups of your data around, but that they could use them for any purpose. They also granted themselves the right to use your image, likeness, and other materials for any purpose. Ostensibly this is for the purpose of advertising facebook. But what you are missing is that facebook is a corporation and corporations never die. When facebook dies it gets bought by someone else who gets all that personal info, and the right to use it for any purpose. 30 years down the road when no one gives one tenth of one shit about facebook, all that personal info could still be used for any purpose including advertising gay porn. (Which mind you, is okay stuff if you want it, but probably not something that most FB users want their picture on. Or in! They have the legal right to filmgimp your face onto a pornstar!
This is not much ado about nothing. If this was only about backups they would only need the right to retain your information indefinitely, and maybe make copies of it. They don't need the right to use that media for any purpose, period the end. They CERTAINLY don't need the right to use your likeness for ANY purpose.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
...and THAT is why Facebook, or big "social networking" websites in general, have any relevance whatsoever.
The Internet, and especially the WWW, were supposed to enable ordinary people to publish their own information without influence and control of "big content providers". It was supposed to be the biggest revolution in publishing since Gutenberg's press--not only were books accessible to the masses, not the masses could publish THEIR OWN information!
What happened to this revolution? The technology is still there, but not only have we not progressed, we've SLID BACKWARDS! We've all abdicated our rights to and responsibilities for our own information to a small handful of very large corporate entities...and then we bitch and moan when those "big content providers" do exactly what we should have expected they'd do with your information--retain it, profit from it, and generally be careless with it.
That's NOT what the 'net was supposed to be about! We were supposed to "rent the pipes" and storage space like we do our phone lines and self-storage garages and then publish our data ourselves. I was thrilled when DSL came to the market here 12 years ago, followed quickly by broadband from the local cable companies. I was able to get internet connectivity 24/7! Now I only needed to "rent the pipe" and I could have even MORE control over how I published by info because I could RUN MY OWN SERVER!
It was looking to me like the dawn of a new era--anyone who wanted to could set up their own little server and run their own websites easier than ever before--the BBS world would be able to move forward from the domain of geeks with extra phone lines and modems to something more graphical and interconnected and "plug and play". People were taking about "internet appliances" and I assumed that as time went on that *two way* appliances would become ubiquitous.
It hasn't happened that way though. There seems to be this insistence that "internet appliances" be one-way client-only devices--merely enhanced TVs and radios where some big network can push information to us as THEY see fit. ISPs have further RESTRICTED the ability to host your own services instead of expanding that ability (primarily because the biggest ISPs are now owned by content publishers). And not only has the old school personal/small community-oriented BBS gone essentially extinct, so have REAL personal websites before they got a chance to really gain traction. We've DEVOLVED from publishing HTML documents on our local ISP's web servers to doing the same on global "web hosts" like Geocities to setting up blogs on global blogging sites to setting up groups on Facebook.
Facebook isn't an ISP, they are yet another traditional media publisher--we give our info away to them and they publish it as they see fit...just as how Old Media works. I suppose I always underestimate people's capacity for laziness or ignorance in this regard. It seems people just don't "get it", or maybe they just don't care. Whatever happened though, the 'net hasn't turned out the way I thought it would, and no amount of changes to the ToS of Facebook or similar sites will fix what is, in my view, the entirely wrong direction for the WWW.