The Facebook Controversy: Should You Really Be Concerned by their TOS?

As you might have heard, Facebook updated parts of its Terms of Service where it reserved the rights to user’s content, even after the user has cancelled their account with them.

The change, picked up first by the popular blog “The Consumerist”, has prompted a backlash only comparable to last year’s beacon fiasco, when Facebook introduced an intrusive system to monitor its user’s activity outside of Facebook and report it back to them.

Last night, Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, posted an official response on the site. The key part to his post reads:

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.

This makes total sense and I wouldn’t want to lose all the photos, messages or comments that a friend has shared with me if he cancels his account. Of course I’m not a lawyer, and there might be an overprotection or blanketing language on the revised TOS.

But to be honest, I’m always prepared to release ownership of any content I upload to the web. If I send a message via Gmail to another user or upload a photo on Flickr, do I really think a legal document will protect me on what the receiving user does with those pieces of information? At that point I usually feel I lost total control of them and have no interest in knowing what happens next.

Daniela Barbosa mentions a post by Elias Bizannes who says data ownership on the social world should be defined as ”the ability to deny use of an asset by another entity”. In effect, we should be fine if our friends have copies of our photos, but we can prosecute those people who we haven’t specifically given permission to store or use them. This is where Facebook may need to be more specific on their intent.

The web has many, many benefits. Keeping a sound approach to content sharing is something that every user has to be constantly in the look out for. It’s right now one of the top downsides to it.

Tagged as: concerns, Facebook, legal, privacy, TOS