When Facebook recently changed its terms of service to no longer allow users to delete their data when they leave the service, it justifiably created an uproar. Just what is Facebook planning to do with this data, and isn’t it mine to delete if I wish. In a blog post, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg tries to calm everyone down.
Essentially, he says that the issues are not so cut and dry. When you share your data with someone else, whether it be an email or a photo, it becomes their data as well. You cannot normally rescind data you share with other people in an e-mail. So why should a social network be any different? Zuckerberg explains:
Our philosophy is that people own their information and control who they share it with. . . . One of the questions about our new terms of use is whether Facebook can use this information forever. When a person shares something like a message with a friend, two copies of that information are created—one in the person’s sent messages box and the other in their friend’s inbox. Even if the person deactivates their account, their friend still has a copy of that message. We think this is the right way for Facebook to work, and it is consistent with how other services like email work. One of the reasons we updated our terms was to make this more clear.
In reality, we wouldn’t share your information in a way you wouldn’t want. The trust you place in us as a safe place to share information is the most important part of what makes Facebook work. . . .
Still, the interesting thing about this change in our terms is that it highlights the importance of these issues and their complexity. People want full ownership and control of their information so they can turn off access to it at any time. At the same time, people also want to be able to bring the information others have shared with them—like email addresses, phone numbers, photos and so on—to other services and grant those services access to those people’s information. These two positions are at odds with each other. There is no system today that enables me to share my email address with you and then simultaneously lets me control who you share it with and also lets you control what services you share it with.
Zuckerberg is saying, “Trust us.” But it is difficult to trust a company that is stripping users of rights they’ve become accustomed to, even if hardly any of them ever actually asserted those rights in practice. And the principle that you should be able to delete your data from the Facebook service is one that many would argue trumps the good that is done by letting Facebook keep it. If I upload a picture which I later regret uploading, why shouldn’t I be able to erase it from Facebook forever, even if some of my friends have already seen it? And should there be different rules for different media? Most people consider the messages in their inbox to be theirs, even if the sender wishes they’d never sent it? And as this data is shared beyond Facebook across the Web, who controls what becomes even harder to determine.
Like Zuckerberg says, it’s complicated.
I don’t mind whatever all these new changes at all. If I have entered the online world and social media, I am accepting all these stuff. And one should not be nervous about it. If you want privacy, then go and sit at home.
Agree with you to an extent. It makes me laugh some of the things people complain about. Like people who use a fake username on Facebook because they are scared of having their identity stolen. So then don’t use Facebook. But there’s definitely a viable complaint if I leave Facebook and they are using my information in an inappropriate way for a non-user. But overall, I agree with what you are saying.
Anyone who believes in the right to own your personal data should be completely offended by Facebook’s TOS:
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
Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or
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.
The following sections will survive any termination of your use of the Facebook Service: Prohibited Conduct, User Content, Your Privacy Practices, Gift Credits, Ownership; Proprietary Rights, Licenses, Submissions, User Disputes; Complaints, Indemnity, General Disclaimers, Limitation on Liability, Termination and Changes to the Facebook Service, Arbitration, Governing Law; Venue and Jurisdiction and Other.
So basically, Facebook owns all your photos, your writings, your friend’s contact details and private information about you.
Forever.
Even if you terminate use of Facebook.
To me, this is simply an abuse of the trust users have placed in a site like Facebook.
I just dare them to try to my image to advertise their services. I certainly know how Cristiano Ronaldo, Adam Sandler and other celebrities (or their agents) on Facebook would feel about that.
The sad part of all is that because all of this is buried in fine print, most people will have no idea that they just signed away pretty much all of their private information.
This is evil.
Not a great day for online privacy.
You gave the same right to your wireless carrier. Did you read those T+C’s?
Do you expect to be able to delete your TechCrunch comments someday?
a post on techcrunch post is a tad different than the tons of sh*t uploaded to FB. just stating the obvious here..
First of all, it does not actually say they own your data – you are granting them a license to USE your data. And it is a non-exclusive license, so you can still use your data however you want.
Second, unless I’m reading it wrong, it says that your privacy settings override the TOS. In other words, if you set all of your data to Only Friends, it cannot be used outside of those restrictions.
baloney……..first Beacon, now this. a user uprising similar to the beacon issue will kill this agenda. i dont see a value in saving the information other than to corral and hold on to existing members. people that have sold there soles to FB will be less likely to take a risk and sell their soles on another network. when it comes to a users data and privacy why does it need to be complicated. this is worse than Goog saving search info for 6 mos. FB is changing from a “friendly social utility” that claimed to care about peoples privacy and data to a possessive dictatorship regime. maybe this has a relationship to the press release of last week regarding data sponging?
ConnectLocator.com – plug yourself
There’s an easy work around. It’s called lying. We know advertisers categorize groups based on age/sex/region/education/income etc. Strategic lying will help shield you from the nuisances of targetted advertising.
facebook thinks I’m a 16 yr old student female from Iowa.
Beacon pt 2! Nuff said!
http://tinyurl.com/7uj5ay
coolestjobsalways
I agree with you. Facebook and Twitter are closed source content silos that do not allow you to control the content that you create.
One of the reasons for this is obvious. Selling Member created content is one of the only ways that they can generate revenue. If members actually controlled and owned the content they created,then members would have the ability to demand transparency from Facebook when it came to selling or sharing their content.
William — what would they sell? Photos of my latest vacation?
Facebook now OWNS Al Pacino, Ronaldo Cristiano, and any other celebrity that signed up to Facebook.
They can now use these people’s image to promote Facebook or anything else they want, whether Viagra ads, or Obey one rule belly scams.
They now will have all of my private information and they can use it however they wish in the future.
I am sorry, but it is not complicated.
It is retarded.
This has to stop.
Anjali Sen
Coming from somebody who used to own, operate, develop, etc. their own social network – it can certainly be a problem when someone deletes an account – what happens to other peoples profiles when suddenly a wave of data is gone, which they deemed part of their profile?
People need to realise in that becoming part of of a social network you and your data mean something to others. If you were to perish and take with you every photo, comment, memory or proof of your existence on this world, that would be a very selfish thing.
Deleting yourself from a social network is not as big a thing as you being removed from the world, obviously, but it has a very negative / spiral effect on others whom choose to stay.
These are all responsibilities each of us take when we are ’social’… its the expectation of a person not to be so selfish. If you share with others, don’t expect to be able to take it all back.
The Internet itself is a Social Network, your website or Blog being your profile.
I wish we would stop living within these walled up Social Networks with terms and conditions and realize you can just have your own website and get the same EXACT type of interaction!!!!!
The Internet IS a Social Network by itself! All Media is Social Media!
Do not over complicate things please!
No, not entirely. If you join a ‘network’ (that is, a people network, not a telephony network) you generally are sharing information and allowing your content to show up on other peoples profiles.
By having your own website, your in control.. but people expect that hot-linking your media files on your own website might someday be disabled or disappear, however this is not expected of a ‘people’ network, such as Facebook.
Register a domain, then you can delete what you want.
Amen to that. The Internet itself IS a Social Network. Not complicated and there are no T’s and C’s to agree too!
I respectfully disagree. The context in which I share information online, as in the physical world, needs to be honored. If I share financial information with my bank or my brokerage that exchange is subject to specific constraints. If I share a photo of my kids with a close group of friends on Facebook, it is subject to the terms of service in place.
And that brings us to the crux of this issue – that the terms were changed, how they were changed, and how they now vary from standards established elsewhere. While I’ll spare you detail on each point, I’ll highlight two critical aspects of the TOS changes.
First, the new terms grant Facebook irrevocable license to my content. That is, regardless of how unacceptable subsequent TOS changes may be, the content I publish is theirs, forever.
Second, the grant is transferable. That is, no matter much I trust Facebook, they have the right to transfer their license to ALL my content to ANY and EVERY partner they deem fit now or in the future.
In his blog post, Mark Zuckerberg outlined his rationale, and it is good. The challenge is that the implementation of these TOS changes is as overbroad as the communication of those changes is inadequate.
I value Facebook’s service and will continue to use it to connect with friends. But, I have sanitized my profile to be consistent with other public profiles (e.g., LinkedIn or Twitter) – no birth dates, no hometowns, no pics of the kids, etc. It’s sad b/c the result of this TOS change is, in effect, a significant decrease in site functionality.
I agree with you Michael. One of the largest issues here is the fact that the terms were changed after people had signed up for the service. Facebook should at lease honor or “Grandfather” those longstanding members of it’s site the right to rescind data as they wish. There is a clear question of trust.
The part that really bothers me (and this goes contrast to many people who say “Well you should never even put up that info in the first place if you dont’ want people to see it”. )… BS!! My point is this. Facebook has established its reputation by being a transparent social service -meaning seeing real peoples profiles. They pride, practice and embrace this approach. Facebook has been a service, I believe, that has grown not only by utility, but by the fact that things are really connecting people, in real ways, with “real” information. I definitely feel if you take away user privileges, you nudge a service into being less authentic.
How will you monetize then? On a fake profile?
Don’t worry, you’ll wake up later.
Zuckerberg wants us to TRUST him? He who stole source code to begin with? RIDICULOUS.
The message from FB is clear:
“Dear user, go f### yourself. Thanks.”
Me, I have just quit FB. Enough is enough. Just because they think they have a monopoly does NOT justify this behavior.
It’s plain n simple, they know everyones favourite coulor, team, food, beverage, game. You name it they know it. You may ask who is “they”? They are any corporation willing to buy that bit of data from facebook. No personal information is given they give a statstical data analysis of the masses for a very high price. Mostly data to make a new product n such.
If Facebook ever uses this information for profit, it’ll face a legitimate class action suit. This could be the straw that sinks the paper tiger.
You FAIL at metaphor.
Paper tiger = something which sounds / looks dangerous, but its made of paper…
Straw.. perhaps a reference to ‘the last straw’
The straw that sinks the paper tiger?
What is that supposed to mean? What in the world is a paper tiger, and why would a straw make it sink?
A paper tiger is something that seems dangerous, but isn’t. Which makes this metaphor even more confusing.
(correction – I guess papyrophobia is actually a fear of paper. Who knew?)
I like that metaphor. Additionally paper tiger is very handy at giving self proclaimed “smart babes” a smack about the head with a clue stick.
does this mean i can never actually*delete* anything… like a picture, or wall post?
Yes. I think this is the common case when it comes to the internet.
thats right.
Wrong.
Dude, http://www.archive.org/
User-agent: ia_archiver
Disallow: /
I think there’s a problem with Zuckerberg’s email analogy. The new Facebook terms, as I read them, says _Facebook_ retains rights to use the data. The email analogy would only work if your ISP said they owned the data you emailed to your friends. Right? Or am I missing something…?
And that analogy only works for messages, anyway. Unless Facebook works by physically copying data I upload and share to my friend’s accounts (which would be a supremely stupid way for it to work), then the data should still be in one place — on my account. My friends might receive links to that data, but if I want to delete it, I should be able to.
Zuck’s explanation seems rather weak, imho.
I agree, because I’m not sending Facebook Corporation my data, I’m sending it to my friends (the network is closed after all- I cannot browse random peoples’ profiles – they have to let me in). I
Actually, you are able to see other peoples pictures, even if you aren’t their friend. Think of all the pictures of a friend that you have on your friends list that you are able to see that that friend didn’t actually post.
But an ISP doesn’t need to retain a copy for the service to work as intuited, whereas Facebook would.
A better analogy would be Gmail – would you want an email message in your inbox to be deleted if a sender requested it?
This does make sense. How often do people change email services and leave all that information behind. Your address book is loaded with contacts and the provider still has all of that data. Imagine undoing all of your Tweets. How many conversations would that effect? Erasing your digital footprint is going to be a difficult task.
Hmm, not sure about this. I think people should be allowed to leave Facebook as easily as they can join the service. Clearly, this is not the case now.
they actually dissactivated account for using not using my real last name…
how did they know that i have no idea. its like they want you to be as accurate as possible and make sure everything is correct and that you put in as much data as possible.
its funny when they did tell me to change my name to my real name, the person from facebook signed off as homer m.
the facebook employee didnt even leave me his last name when he was writing to me.
in this age of technology its funny that facebook knows the privacy issues with posting full names and real info up to the point where they don’t even do it but they expect everyone else to adhere with enthusiasm
go figure.
Good point. One person in my Facebook friends is a very high ranking employee at Facebook. He barely uses the service at all, and when he does, it’s in a very public, impersonal manner. That should tell you something.
Surely it would have been better to draft a paragraph on the nature of the internet – once you post it it’s everyone’s and they will do whatever they want with it. And then a paragraph stating that you waive the right to sue Facebook for any involvement in copyright infringement etc by a third party?
I agree with Akmal, Kevin and – yes – Zuckerberg. We should all be used to the idea that we immediately lose control over anything we put on-line. Unless it’s copyrighted or patented already, we should have been expecting something like this all along. I will continue to trust Facebook, to the same extent that I trust any site – just enough to use it, but not enough to use it like a fool.
I am sorry, I would have to strongly disagree with you. This IS evil, and I do not use the word lightly.
I am a firm believer in online privacy and the right to one’s own personal information, and this offends me to no end.
This is an abuse of trust, and to me this is no different than scamming/phishing schemes that try to get your information and do whatever they want with it.
Trust us? I am sorry. I will not.
Anjali Sen
Anjali,
So you have a blog on “blogspot” with certain posts. After a few months/years you decide to deactivate or delete some of those posts.
In the mean time, other online services like say Yahoo-search, Live-Search, Spock, etc have already indexed your content. Would you now hold Google (blogspot owner) for sharing your content ? Or even say some individual copies your content and hosts it from some remote county, where US laws may not work.
I think facebook is just trying to avoid being into that tricky situation where it gets sued for content floating in the Internet.
I think “you” as a user should be aware of the fact that once the data leaves out of you, it can end up anywhere. Havent, you experienced in personal life, a secret told to a few friend still sometimes ends up outside.
cheers.
Why doesn’t facebook just say, you own all of your information.
We do not control what happens to it outside of our service.
Would this not be the reasonable approach instead of legally reserving the right to use your information for whatever purposes it wants.
I am sorry but I don’t buy Zuckerberg’s argument. They are trying to find revenue every place they can in an ad recession with .10 CPMs. They have lost my trust.
All the search engines allow me to deactivate them with a simple robots.txt file (a standard already exists as long as content is on my website) or specifically request them to delete content (so a standard ALSO exists for content not on my website).
Get some clue before posting messages in a public forum.
No other website has these draconian TOS. FB, like its Beacon trash, is here again with bollocks-for-brains ideas of privacy. They better fix this sh*te or the huge numbers will start dwindling pretty fast.
As to what the correct model of data sharing should be: look at dataportability.org. The control should be with me, the consumer. I decide who sees what, when. Period.
It’s time for Facebook et al to wake up and jump over their garden walls.
I thought by law/default your photos are already copyrighted (not sure about other content that’s not an article or blog post or story)
Peoples photos and art and ideas are automatically copyrighted to the creator, the problem with facebooks TOS is that it can take any of that copyrighted information and use it… even sell it with out giving the person any notice or getting consent.
This means to artists that they are losing out on money for their hard work.
This is right. Creating something in or on fixed media (including a hard drive or server) automagically grants the creator copyright. This is the only useful information I learned in law school.
The funny this is that photographs are subject to copyright protection from the moment that they are taken. Registering a copyright makes it easier to enforce, but is unnecessary for something to be copyrighted – I wonder how their lawyers thought that changing the TOS would deal with all of the photos they already have up there.
Well Happy I can use my Facebook Connect sign in to comment on Facebook and how they store data. Anyway wrote a recent blog post giving a more in-depth report on future plans for FB Data monetization http://bit.ly/7ytr9
This is what happens when a large non-profit company is run by inexperienced (as in life experience) kids. Maybe Zuckerberg’s peers will buy into his weird explanation but me and my kind (over 30) probably wont. I wont be using FaceBook anymore and I doubt I am alone.
Zuckerberg’s explanation is the lamest I’ve heard. If I send someone via email the draft of my book and they go and publish it as theirs then I have a legitimate legal bone to pick with them.
BTW, it’s ironic that there’s a big FB Connect login button to the right of the comment box.
If you guys ever use Facebook or LinkedIn et al, why not give us a try?
We make it possible to search for not just a Person but anything you could possibly imagine.
In the context of People search, here’s a sample of how you can refine your search using unlimited number of filters to find exactly the person you are looking for.
http://tinyurl.com/ac9nwm
I think Facebook are being a little disingenuous here. What about all the blog posts that are automatically uploaded to Facebook via RSS? What about the content that is “co-created” via “Facebook campaigns” with big name brands?
The catch-all of nature of this change to the Terms of Service and its perpetual nature has ramifications not just for individuals, but also for bloggers, publishers, content sharers, brands and agencies.
I think some people are missing some of the concerns. Yes if it is on the Internet, blah blah. However the TOS states that they (Facebook) can use “any User Content” you post for pretty any reason including “including commercial or advertising” for Facebook. That is where I have the problem, just because I may or may not use Facebook- they should not have the right from this day forward to use any of my content (images for example) to advertise their product without just compensation.
The TOS goes way beyond the “EMAIL service” analogy Zuckerberg tried.
Agreed. Messages are one thing, my photos are completely another. They should be deleted when my account is deleted or when I delete them. My “friends” that might have that content linked will just have to deal. FacistBook wants to make money off of you, and they want you to have no legal recourse about it. BS.
You hit the nail on the head.
OF COURSE you can’t delete messages you’ve already sent or wall posts you’ve already written. People understand that part.
But, your photos and posts (whatever they call them), aren’t being *sent* to anyone. They are in your account and *you* should be able to control them. Including deleting them if you wish.
Are people really that daft? Does Zuckerberg realize how much his “email” analogy sucks?
Don’t believe it, sorry. Totally lame explanation there from Zuckerberg.
I reckon it is more like they don’t want the place to look like a shambles when a whole lot of us leave, so if all our content is still there, you can’t really tell we’ve gone. Can you.
Sorry, don’t trust em. They’ve got clever lawyers, they could write something that protected our content. Too lazy and arrogant for me.
Problem with “trust us” statement is that even if you do trust Facebook, companies change and sometimes even go out of business.
And if Facebook ever goes bankrupt any sleazebag whit money could buy all that data, to do anything and everything with it.
I don’t think Facebook will go bankrupt anytime soon but perpetual is a long time, and nobody knows what will happen in 10 -15 years. (at a time that todays 15-20 year olds get serious jobs).
This is by no means exclusive to Facebook (google, yahoo ….)
Problem with Trust Us is that we;ve heard it too many times before …
I know personally … my parents lost their entire savings with Madoff and now are in debt for the first time in their lives.
Zuckerberg stole code from ConnectU (that’s why he finally agreed to pay them millions, just a few days ago).
Why the hell should we TRUST a THIEF ?!
Why is being consistent with email a good thing? Email has been around since the ’70s!
I think CEO Zuckerberg conveniently confuses the values of his corporate world with the personal world, probably because his corporation is dependent on the personal. (And online and off, this is a serious distinction.)
When Zuckerberg says — “At the same time, people also want to be able to bring the information others have shared with them—like email addresses, phone numbers, photos and so on—to other services and grant those services access to those people’s information.” — who the heck is he’s talking to?
I certainly have no intention of sharing anyone’s email/phone/address with another “service” to give that “service” access to someone else’s info. Why would I?
First off, isn’t this exactly what spam is?
This is not how individuals behave, but companies who want to swell their ranks with new consumer blood.
My *small* business explicitly tells potential customers that I will not use their private info to sell, trade, give away, or use for anything but what they signed up for. AND…they can delete themselves off my list at any time!
Sorry, Zuck, your rational sucks of corporate values that are far, far from customer friendly, no matter how much you want to spin it that way.
Or how much you’ve convinced yourself this business model is okay.
Gee, a mass facebook profile delete party is tempting
“When you share your data with someone else, whether it be an email or a photo, it becomes their data as well. You cannot normally rescind data you share with other people in an e-mail. So why should a social network be any different?”
This is basically like saying: “Humans kill and rape people. I’m a human too, why should I be any different” Just because other things seem to be legit (consider someone else’s mail as your own) doesn’t mean it’s legitimacy holds up for your own environment (using user data for commercial purposes).
Yes, couldn’t agree more.
Anjali Sen
The problem with Zuckerman’s account, and this reading of it, is that you’re missing two important parts of the issue. The first is the way the changes were implemented, with an implicit, unannounced automatic opt-in. The second is that the new TOS doesn’t limit FB’s usage of content to that which is needed or appropriate for FB’s networking service. It expands the rights FB claims to commercial use of such content – which means that (1) they are denying all users of FB the right to grant exclusive rights to their work to anyone other than FB, (2) they are reserving to themselves the right to make money off the use of this content, even against the copyright holder’s wishes, (3) the rights as described extend even to the right to legally sell such things as logos and trademarked images without the owners’ explicit and specific consent.
By further asserting that this is a perpetual right, and a right that does not expire even if the copyright holder removes his or her content or cancels his or her FB account, what FB is essentially saying is “By showing up today, you agree to give me all of your content, forever, for free.”
THAT’s what the issue is about, not simply whether or not your friends will still have you tagged in your photos. Zuckerman’s attempt to cast the issue in those terms, coupled with the way these changes were instituted, does not fill me with confidence that FB has any of its members’ interests in mind, but rather its own.
I think that goes back to the whole point: “Trust Us” but with Facebook’s track record, it’s very hard to do just that.
It also reinforces something I’ve been saying for years at my photography friends…don’t upload your work to Facebook!
If the whole Facebook Application debacle wasn’t reason enough to not trust them, this TOS mandatory/automatic “opt-in” should cement it!
What a stupid thing to say. Facebook is not email, nor are the photos “duplicated” so two digital copies exist. When you send someone a photo, regardless of it’s content, there’s an implied license. That photo belongs to me and I am giving you the license to see it, unless I say otherwise. That’s how ownership of intellectual property works.
Also, email might be implied, but a legal terms of service is TOTALLY DIFFERENT.
Um it’s free! Don’t post if you don’t want it spread across the web. What happens to comments I place on someone else’s post, image etc. What happens to that content?
It’s probably a lot more complex regarding how their dB works. You delete something here, what effect (thinking butterfly here) will that have on the rest of the network.
Just because you post it doesn’t mean you can delete it. It’s a social site. Be social. If in RL you tell some to “F off” (here you go, here’s a freebie for anyone to tell me to ‘F off’); you cannot delete it. It’s done. If you send a photo to a zillion friends, you cannot delete all copies.
Get over it.
Some fair points, but if it’s really a ‘free’ service as you put it, should you be able to leave the service without this hassle?
Agreed, but my ISP has no right to use the photos I attach in an email for their commercial profit without my approval. The same thing is used here…I agree that there may be millions of copies out there and that I have no guarantee of it’s “true” deletion. But Facebook is saying that they–as in Facebook itself, not your friends–have the right to do anything they want with that content regardless of if you left the service or not.
Well in this case, it makes sense that Facebook would need the legal right… unlike your ISP which often may send your email to another provider to be displayed to the end user… your Facebook messages when sent are still on Facebook. They are covering themselves legally in the ability to keep showing content in the persons Inbox without the option for you to revoke the content when it is no longer your right to. That’s like if I mailed you a letter or photo, then regretted it and was like please return it… I can oblige, but I have no obligation. Except in this case Facebook is maintaining both sides. I agree that commercial usage may be taking it a bit too far, but that just might be to cover them legally to show advertisements next to the content etc. I would hope they would not take this to the level of using the content it self in advertising, and I’m sure they could adjust the terms to assure this more clearly.
I’m more interested in their text that reads “…worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) …any User Content”
As a creative person with photographs or character designs on facebook- this means what? They can sell or sublicense my photographs at will?
I’m with the anyone who has their finger on the ‘delete account’ button.
Does anyone find the irony of the protesting of TOS when the blog (Consumerist?) has Facebook Connect?
(posted over at http://www.usabilitycounts.com)
Facebook is not my friend. My friends are my friends. I may not be able to take my data back, but I won’t add any. And I’m not sure there’s really a retroactive leg to stand on with my existing data.
Bye facebook.
The Facebook TOS story didn’t interest me yesterday, but Zuckerberg’s comments make it clear that he’s not being open about all the reasons the change was made.
Facebook keeps inching to the side of more control and away from user benefit. When users complain loudly, they back off a bit, but not so much that they don’t keep some of that control they grabbed.
It’s a sneaky tactic that makes them look a little to slick and corporate to be trusted with my personal information.
There are too many people on Facebook for me to quit cold turkey, but I think I’ll pull most of my content and use my Facebook account as a signpost to websites that I trust.
I doubt any of this will cause facebook users to leave.
They know users are dependent on their service. Users are so hypocritical they create “Boycott facebook” groups INSIDE facebook itself.
If you don’t like something, lose it, try an alternative. Trust me, you won’t miss much. Find something that fits you, and don’t let peer pressure of facebook decide for you.
Or how about not using an alternative either?
Am I the only one who thinks this isn’t all that complicated? Any information you have posted and are ‘hosting’ – ie: your own photos, videos, profile, etc.. should be deletable by you. You take the risk that, in the time they were up an individual may have copied them but that is life but Facebook, as a rule, shouldn’t get to keep and exploit your personal materials. Then the second part of the rule is that any material you send or post on others’ profiles you can’t remove. ie: wall posts, messages, etc…
It’s not that complicated people. If I send a message to another user with my pic facebook most likely doesn’t send them the pic, they send them a pointer to the pic (otherwise they would have hundreds or thousands of duplicates everywhere). If I remove the source it’s called “file not found” on most servers.
Come on – Mark’s email is dimwitted at best.