Home > Ideas, My Thoughts, Rants > My Thoughts on FaceBook’s TOS Changes

My Thoughts on FaceBook’s TOS Changes

February 16th, 2009 admin

I’m the worst when it comes to research, organizing information and putting it in quotes for you all to digest. That kind of work is what true jounalism and high paid bloggers are for. No I’m just going to be one guy talking out his ass about FaceBook’s news today. Retweetist shows today’s top retweeted URLs and FaceBook’s TOS news hogs it all. Even Twitter Trends are showing Facebook, TOS and other things at the top. It’s interesting because I didn’t even notice all of this was happening until receiving 5 DMs from friends saying, “I’m leaving FaceBook and you should consider doing the same.” Wow. Well, I was intrigued and began investigating. All of this was over FaceBook keeping your information forever. That’s it?

How many times have you clicked “I Agree” when signing up for a new service. I agree to terms once a day since I joined the web in 1996. Forums, chat rooms, web services, banks and social networks all have terms of service and iTunes sometimes changes theirs and forces you to re-agree to new terms just to access their music store or play the music you legally purchased. These TOS agree buttons have forced us to not think twice about what we’re agreeing too and a few sites occasionally delve into the terms with a lawyer and discover some horrifying truths. Well, here’s the truth about The Internet as a whole.

Nothing you do at a computer, on a cell phone or on your television is private anymore. Someone in some remote location can find out everything you order on pay per view, every email you send to our girlfriend and every Myspace message you send to your ex-girlfriend. Every time you load Bittorrent or sync your iPhone, usage statistics, logs and kilobytes of information are stored in a remote server and someone has the password to see that info. Scared? I’m not.

I installed Little Snitch on my Apple laptop and was pretty astonished when every single Apple application from iLife to Calculator and TextEdit brought up a window that says, “This application is trying to connect to xxxx.apple.com” and I had the choice to allow or deny that connection. Why the hell would Calculator.app try to connect to Apple? I can only assume it’s usage statistics and maybe Apple is analyzing how often I use certain equations or what buttons I push the most. After a few weeks of receiving this notifications, I uninstalled Little Snitch and I’m just leaving it up to chance now. I don’t care what Apple knows about me because I have some logic that you should all get through your head.

If I custom built my own hardware and operating system. I mean actually custom built my own processors and expansion cards and built my own unique operating system and then bought some black fiber without using my own ISP (no Comcast or AT&T) and then put a computer on this end of the US and another computer on the other end of the US and installed a web server in between and then sent an email through that web server to my grandmother then I might have complete and utter privacy. Once you throw in Comcast Internet, Microsoft Windows, Outlook 2007, Gmail and fiber that you don’t own, everyone between you and grandma have full right to access that information and there’s not a god damn thing you can do about it.

So they the hell is FaceBook getting so much shit? Because they came out and said, “we own your information” and that upset people. The masses need to understand that each instant message, email, tweet, website, forum post, blog post and song you add or download from the web is logged, archived, saved and indexed on a server somewhere and at some point in your Internet travels, you agreed to terms of service without even thinking and this content is saved forever without you even knowing it. From now on, just know that nothing is private, behave yourself, don’t cheat on your girlfriend, don’t look at illegal porn and don’t steal music because it’s being logged and there’s no need bitching about it.

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  • the fact that Facebook change their TOS back so quickly is an indication that they knew they were wrong in the first place
  • I think you are missing the point of some of the concern. It's not all about privacy or indexing and storage that never goes away. It's also about Facebook's claim to your content for purposes of re-publishing and sub-licensing for profit. If you are a blogger who imports your feed to your Facebook page, FB now has the right to anything it wants with it as a re-publisher, without your permission and without compensating you. That's why today I stopped importing my feed.
  • Liana hit the nail on the head.

    I understand that most of what I send can be sniffed out at any point in the chain. I work at an ISP and understand that by federal law, you must have the capability to tap into the network at any time if someone has the proper warrant. I may not like this but I accept it.

    What I don't accept is someone taking my content like a photo and using that photo to sell other services without my permission and without any compensation.

    I disagree with Liana on one point in her first comment. Facebook absolutely has the right to take any content posted to their site and use it anyway they see fit. It is in the TOS that users agree to in order to use the service. It may not be ethical and most people may not agree to it, but it is legal.

    Zuckerberg is trying to diffuse the situation with a blog post on the Facebook site by stating, "In reality, we wouldn't share your information in a way you wouldn't want." It doesn't matter what Zuckerberg says. The legal terms in the TOS didn't change with his blog post. Is it possible that this is being blown out of proportion? Absolutely!

    Will I continue to use Facebook? Yes. I have connected with many friends that I haven't communicated with in years.

    Will I think twice before posting a photo on Facebook? Absolutely. The last thing I want is to see a photo I posted to Facebook of a friend or relative being used on a billboard or a magazine to sell Viagra.
  • Knightryder
    I am just glad you narrowed it down to illegal porn... :)
    As long as the rest is ok, I feel much better now!
  • Please allow me to post an example to continue my previous post. When you had your lights stolen from your bike, it was parked in public. But, that doesn't give someone the right to take/steal the lights from your bike. Just because it's in public, you still own the bike, right? It doesn't suddenly become the ownership of whoever decides to help themselves to it.

    How is intellectual property on the web any different from tangible ownership of goods in public space?

    Just some thoughts. Thanks again.
  • great post!! thank you for saying all the things I have been thinking but haven't had the chance to write down! keep up the good work and friend me on facebook!
  • Great post, Adam. Thanks for sharing. But, with all due respect, privacy and ownership are two different entities.

    When I post content, I'm of the mindset that I am letting that site "borrow" my content for their for-profit (or not) purposes. I, for the most part, am not being paid to write for these sites, like Facebook or Twitter.

    If you let me borrow something, I can't ethically go around telling people I own what you've let me borrow.

    I understand that by clicking "I Agree." when signing up for a web service, I need to be aware of the TOS. Just because I make something public doesn't give anyone the right to say, "Thanks." I'll take that now. It belongs to me.

    Thanks for the forum. :)
  • Agreed wholeheartedly. People make that agreement constantly, and almost always completely go ape-shit when they find out what they AGREED to, as if they are entitled to revolt or have been wronged in some way.

    But for 99% of us, it really doesn't even matter. Since my Facebook is just a recap of what I am doing on other sites, they don't own anything I created. Just my itinerary for the most part.

    And another thing: Hasn't Facebook's TOS always included the bit about owning what you put on their site? I heard people freaking out about this like two years ago.
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