Facebook Responds to ToS Anger

Recent changes to Facebook’s Terms of Service (ToS) caused much anger in the blogosphere, with some users cancelling their accounts in protest. Facebook has now responded and explained the reasons for these changes.

The change that concerned people was the deletion of a clause that removed Facebook’s right to use your content after you closed your account. The Consumerist summed this up as meaning: “We can do anything we want with your content. Forever.”

Facebook has moved quickly to address these worries. Founder Mark Zuckerberg has posted a lengthy explanation on the Facebook blog. In this he says:

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. Our goal is to build great products and to communicate clearly to help people share more information in this trusted environment.

Full marks to Zuckerberg for responding so swiftly. I fully understand Facebook’s reasoning and accept his sincerity.

But that doesn’t make the issue go away. The good intentions of the current management don’t necessarily bind a future management when they have a legal ToS contract to wave around. Your content might be safe for now, but will it resurface 10 years from now when Facebook has been bought up and become part of EvilMegacorp International?

What’s really needed is a more subtle wording of the ToS. The lawyers and techies at Facebook should be able to come up with some form of wording that allows them to continue to use your content in existing apps (eg email) but not in novel ways.

Of course the key lesson is simple: if you want to keep full control over your stuff then don’t upload it. Not anywhere, not ever.