Isn’t it ironic that Facebook, which is so often used by groups of people to protest and demand changes for just about anything, has reverted to its former Terms Of Services under pressure of the community?
After trying to calm everyone down first, Mark Zuckerberg has now posted a new blog post stating that the company will revert to its previous ToS while they “resolve the issues that people have raised” (the post is being hammered right now so it’s going up and down).
The company has even polled some of its users in news feeds asking them if they should go back to their previous ToS.
According to the young CEO, it’s a language thing and they just did a poor job explaining the changes. But those changes will still be coming in the next few weeks, this time including the Facebook user community to make sure everyone can live with it / gets it (I always thought it was impossible to please everyone, but anyway):
Our next version will be a substantial revision from where we are now. It will reflect the principles I described yesterday around how people share and control their information, and it will be written clearly in language everyone can understand. Since this will be the governing document that we’ll all live by, Facebook users will have a lot of input in crafting these terms.
You have my commitment that we’ll do all of these things, but in order to do them right it will take a little bit of time. We expect to complete this in the next few weeks. In the meantime, we’ve changed the terms back to what existed before the February 4th change, which was what most people asked us for and was the recommendation of the outside experts we consulted.
Update: Barry Schnitt, Senior Manager, Corporate Communications and Public Policy at Facebook, weighed in on the discussion on the “People Against the new Terms of Service (TOS)” group.
Facebook has set up a group for its “Bill Of Rights”, where people will be able to provide feedback on the ToS changes. Only 2,000 people have joined the group at the time of this writing.
This isn’t the first time the company backtracks on a decision that got its users and outsiders all riled up. Beacon, anyone?
power of the people!
It’s good to know we do have a say on such things!
bestjobsonline
http://tinyurl.com/7uj5ay
Yes, you said right..
http://www.smartbloggerz.com
the social slaves have been freed. how many times has MZ shot himself in the foot? makes you wonder whos really at the steering wheel.
Im not a huge fan of Facebook personally as I think that you can have your own website and engage Socially on the Internet without any T’s and C’s, but I have to give Mark and Facebook credit for listening to their users. That is a good sign, well done !
Facebook usually gets it right eventually though… News Feed -> Uproar -> Engineers Working Overtime -> Result: Incredible Privacy Options and News Feed being the biggest traffic driver for the site.
I don’t know whether to be offended that they felt it was okay in the first place to take little bites of our privacy rights (between this and Beacon) or just be glad that they decided to hit ctrl-z both times.
It’s a fair step. Everyone can now decide to continue or leave Facebook. Or just put not to much information about him or her. Anyway Facebook is still really cool.
Well, its just the minimum they could do, go back to the old ToS, by now it is not enough, they’ve got to revise that too.
They created a group called: “Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities”
So anyone can participate, here’s the link:
http://www.face...gid=69048030774
Added, thanks.
Given Mark Zuckerberg’s dirty history, the uproar is no surprise.
Exactly right. He will keep screwing FB users for as long as he is in charge.
But at least FB users have been warned repeatedly – anyone who posts information there they wouldn’t want sold, rented, shared or lost is a fool.
Thank God. My witty and interesting status messages are safe.
Don’t you nerds have more interesting things to whine about? For the last 8 years, Americans have lived under a government that has systematically eroded the most basic and principled directives we believe as a people. Shouldn’t we have learned those lessons and begin applying our watchful eye to the current Presidential Administration and ensure that it protects our civil liberties and rolls back the egregious violations of same from the previous Administration?
Instead, you people are worried about your stupid photos and collective nonsense on Facebook. I’m a Facebook power user…and nothing I’ve seen in using the site (which I adore) would make me think twice about Facebook’s ToS. None of you (or me) are that interesting.
Get a life, get some perspective.
Many congratulations on being a “Facebook power user”, that’s awesome.
You think that because “None of you (or me) are that interesting” it’s ok to disregard user’s privacy and take ownership of every piece of intellectual property that a user uploads, forever?
Not everyone has the strength of a Facebook power user, so spare a thought for us civilian Facebook users!
OK, Smash… let me get this straight:
1) Your your sarcasm is an admission that your status messages are uninteresting and lack wit.
2) We’re all nerds.
3) Every single thing we’ve EVER put on Facebook is either “stupid” or “collective nonsense”. (You’re a “power user”, so you must know all of our usernames, be friends with all of us, and looked through all of our profiles.)
4) You don’t put any value on anyone’s stuff, including your own, regarding Facebook’s new TOS.
5) None of us are interesting enough (or artistic enough) to ever have to worry about Facebook taking the rights to use our copyrighted material, in any way they want, forever and ever, even after we delete our account.
6) None of us have lives or perspective.
I know it’s only February, but folks, I think we might have a candidate for the asshole of the year award. Anyone want to second the motion? Too bad he didn’t list his Facebook “power user” account; we all could have sent him a big virtual hug and congratulations… or something else.
Hello “Facebook Power User”,
Ever wondered how so many “social apps” like Facebook, Twitter, now Loopt which specialise in collecting more information about you keep getting funded (and funded with additional rounds of capital) without generating revenue, profit or breaking even?
Don’t tell me “its the VCs”. I’ve got one answer for you – Government Intelligence (by proxy).
They Cold War is over and they need to adapt to 21st Century practices to monitor people. Hello social apps.
After all, people provide all the information voluntarily – bio info, demographic info, network of friends, current location, current thoughts, tagged photos etc etc. Its too easy. The kind of stuff that used to be costly to acquire.
Think about it this way. If you are heading any Govt Intelligence Agency today, can you afford to ignore these social apps?
Would you “invest” a couple of billion dollars in these firms in order to get your own people in there and ensure first rate access to the constantly evolving intelligence in their databases?
Go figure.
Google is a better example
nail on the head
ruling out the possibility that such a thing could happen is where people go wrong
expect the best and prepare for the worst, not a novel concept
Exactly.
That’s why I boycott Google (and their tons of properties) whenever I can and don’t even start to use FB.
On top of it all, people are slyly caught up in the dialectic. Is it good or is it bad? Whichever I decide it is, Facebook is cool!
How about, go ask your grandpa what privacy means and perhaps you will consider whether you should be giving all these companies your information for free rather than debating their policies while you are an active member.
If a child grows up these days, all of this seems normal and therefore they are willing to accept small changes to their lives. Little do they know (and little do they care), their parents accepted small changes too. The fact that these things are normal to us, doesn’t mean they are truly normal. ‘Normal’ always changes.
Stop seeing technology for its positives only or you’re just a lab rat.
Make sure you are treating the problem and not the symptom. Don’t treat a headache with advil if your headache comes from your smoking habit.
How does one get a child to take his medicine? You either tell them it will give them superpowers or you make it taste good with artificial flavors. Either way, the bad taste is turned into a positive so the child does what they should. Not connected online to your friends? Thats a problem. Use Facebook…oh and here are all the positives so you do it. Have a problem with an aspect of Facebook? We’ll pretend we care but whats important to us, we already have.
Beacon was on my mind too! Like any social network, the power of it lies in the people. Don’t mess them.
Please also read this reply from Facebook spokesperson, Barry Schnitt.
http://www.yoji...-from-facebook/
thanks, added.
they saved themselves from lots of bad press if this went any forward. my issue is that none of the smart people working there had the commonsense to know this tos wouldnt fly with their members. seem to me like the policy makers there are all amateurs kids just fresh out of college.
Saved themselves from lots of bad press? Not quite.
Federal complaint by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) to Federal Trade Commission is in the works. This is getting insane.
http://tinyurl.com/akv4vc
Why do they do controversial things, piss people off, revert, and try again? Wouldn’t it be a lot better for all involved if they had an open forum for big changes BEFORE anyone gets riled up.
Most people would ignore it, and it would kill these silly protest groups. Then, even if the community doesn’t like the eventual changes, at least they have goodwill for having asked first.
My guess is because they are an arrogant self serving company that doesn’t give a c**p about the user’s rights or privacy.
True…most big companies simply don’t listen to their users. Google has proved it…
In the case of Beacon, they were also able to use the uproar to hide a major change they made…you can now disable the items from appearing in your feed, but you cannot completely disable the 3rd parties sharing the information with Facebook (unless you go and disable Javascript).
Kudos to them for handling it in a professional manner. They are under a lot of pressure from all sides and not losing their cool.
I can only imagine what the day must have been like for Zuckerberg and other executives over there.
So, after this move, it will remain very difficult for Facebook to make more money than they spend. And then to survive on the long term, in a very tough economy.
Wait & see…
Like I said, pressure from all sides. I think Facebook Connect will be their darkhorse that gets them through to profitability, but Robin’s right, must have been an absolute hell of a day…would make a great 10 minutes in a movie one day.
These facebook guys are like a bunch of seedy, little squirmy, jerky, nerds.
Was I the only one completely not concerned with this? As far as I understood it they were changing the ToS to be more inline with how email works: once you send it to someone else, its out of your hands.
Did I miss some big-ass conspiracy or something?
Due to the broad language used, whether they intended to or not they were also claiming rights to all content you put on the site. So unlike somewhere like Flickr where they have permission to display your images but you retain the rights, Facebook would have all rights to any photos you upload. Same for all other content. The TOS was overreaching when it didn’t need to.
In France, an e-mail, as a regular letter or fax or every kind of private correspondance, still belongs in some way to the sender : the receiver has no right to publish it without the agreement of the sender.
Facebook says the reversion was due to feedback – absolute hogwash. They tried to pull a fast one on users to assert an even stronger position in social networking.
I am one of those who remain clueless about the uproar. Gee, someone might steal my Facebook comments or links to my posts… or heaven forbid my pictures?? I consider them all ‘in the public domain’ once I post them.
The issue is that The Facebook, Inc. could have taken any of your blog posts, photos, etc. and used them for advertising purposes, or used it for some other financial gain, without due compensation to you. Not only that, if you are an artist, and you post your work to Facebook, they would have owned that forever, regardless of whether or not you left.
why can’t you delete your account on facebook. it only allows deactivation.
You can delete your account, I remember there is a certain link to it though. Deactivation is just the option that they push into your face when you try to delete your account.
Sometimes I really can not understand what is the big fuss about Facebook. In my city, I can find many people many hours of a day in Facebook for nothing. It seems that the top management of the company are not satisfied with the level of publicity they are getting in main stream media. So, they need to take some controversial steps so that they can get a lot of media coverage.
We have also a different approach of this subject here: Facebook Terms Of Service Are Updated
Facebook Terms Of Service Are Updated
That’s a stupid move by FB right there.
They are stuck in their own little echo chamber, and think that users actually cared about the change of ToS, while probably less than 0.1% even care about the change.
Its always good to see people forcing change on such large ‘powerful’ sites such as facebook.
I hope they get it right from now on.
It good action that facebook take.
So, if they’ve gone back to the old TOS you should be able to delete your account again? I was never happy with the changes, but lets see how many of the people who said they were going to leave Facebook do so before the new terms come back in.
@rob: probably less than the BurgerKing App led to …
Commenting with Facebook Connect to show that I do trust Facebook. Good move on their part. I’m sure they can still get what they need in a new ToS without the broad changes they tried. It will take them a little longer to write them, but it’ll work. Kudos to Facebook for paying attention to their users!!
I have read news about them,I had read the news that Facebook has serious law suit because what mark has done at the past “suspect Stealing Idea from his own room mate’and with the last news that Facebook is trying to take all asset that members has put on there facebook blogs,I know this social networks try to prison the freedom cause of the economy recessions,Poor for facebook,hope they stop being such a social police like this
Very Innovative and cool stuff which facebook made.
http://quotesin...ry.blogspot.com
“This isn’t the first time the company backtracks on a decision that got its users and outsiders all riled up. Beacon, anyone?”
And THAT wasn’t even the first time. Remember when the Mini-Feed was introduced in 2006? They forgot to make it opt-out-able, and had to endure a public outcry then, too.
Making controversial changes without getting the community involved beforehand is pretty much Facebook’s MO at this point.
Let’s hope the rewrite is acceptable.
Hopefully the rewrite doesn’t leave so many open doors as the last one did. If you delete your stuff off their service, that should be the end of it, period.
The single act of changing the term have given many ppl a negative impression of facebook. Some people will quit, many others will stay alert of any future changes. But most people won’t care.
Zuckerberg has become a HUGE sell out. How worthless does money make you, to take, take and take. Your negative action will bring you just that, negative reaction always!
You, Zuckerberg, are no longer an inspiration
While perception is reality, and the emotional response suggests that Facebook needs to do a better job of being consultative with its community versus delivering material edicts from on high, the truth is that this is much ado about nothing.
We create a “snail trail” when we plug into communities online, that snail trail becomes substrate that interconnects with other users and discussion threads.
It’s just not reasonable to expect that you can rip that out, creating virtual potholes in the communal space.
Also, why do we begrudge Facebook as nefarious for wanting to monetize these snail trails when we happily accept Google monetizing our traversals, web pages, images and the like? It’s just silly, in my opinion.
Check out:
Why Facebook’s Terms of Service Change is Much Ado About Nothing. (http://bit.ly/xxE4d)
For more fodder on this one.
Mark
The difference is that the user data is what makes Facebook what it is, without it, Facebook is nothing. To assert ownership over my data, even if I leave the service, is a travesty. I own my photos, Facebook does not, they just host them.
That is truly amazing. The people control Facebook. Maybe they will all go to Bebo and then AOL will be redeemed for its recent buyout of Bebo, stay tuned, ” Youv’e got Mail”
The real question is does Facebook have integrity or are they all about the money now?
I think that this whole event is a testament to our times. We are getting listened to. When we complain, the company responds. I think that this whole event is pretty neat in that aspect. http://www.news..._comes_to_terms This link talked about what is happening now with facebook and their now twice changed terms of service. I would put money on the idea that they will try and change it again later once the media buzz has died down.
I don’t think it’s ironic at all. Didn’t they remove the “is” from a user’s status update in response to Facebook groups asking for it?
Sure… it may be unheard for a company/service to actually listen to its users/customers, but it’s not ironic.
We seem to keep running into problems like this with Facebook. Maybe we should take a different approach…what if there were a non-profit social network? If you have a minute, check out my blog and give me some feedback!
Looks like this controversy has widespread implications. Check out this story in this morning’s SF Chronicle: Facebook woes hit privacy officer http://www.sfga.../BAKU160NHU.DTL
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Ya, it’s good old TOS is back and someone does actually read them. But that still does not set the “just scroll to bottom and click I agree” phenomena.
It makes no sense that Facebook would risk messing up a good thing by edging in on people’s intellectual property. They had people’s trust and then they go and risk losing it; not smart.
It isn’t really ironic – it just shows the power of users. Actually facebook have been listening recently – removing the ‘is’ from the status box and allowing you to view the updates you choose.
These facebook guys are like a bunch of seedy, little squirmy, jerky, nerds.
I don’t think it’s ironic at all. Didn’t they remove the “is” from a user’s status update in response to Facebook groups asking for it?
Sure… it may be unheard for a company/service to actually listen to its users/customers, but it’s not ironic.