We’re live blogging this morning’s Facebook conference call, during which Mark Zuckerberg is planning to “announce the new steps Facebook is taking to improve user understanding and ownership of the Facebook terms of service and, more generally, the policies of the Facebook service”. The call begins at 11 AM PST.
To coincide with today’s call, Facebook has also announced that it is Opening Up Its Terms Of Service To Input From Users.
After a brief delay. Elliot Schrage, Facebook’s VP Communications and Public Policy, is introducing the call.
Mark Zuckerberg:
Today we are going to talk about a set of documents that will be the governing documents of Facebook from here on. . . . We feel this is fairly unprecedented, giving users this much involvement into the process. The purpose of Facebook is to make the world more transparent and open. The governing documents are the framework of how we want to move forward with this. Last week we put up an old set of terms after we got feedback from a newer set of terms that we put up. What we are talking about today are things we’ve discussed at Facebook and our principles for a long time. We took last week as a strong signal that people care about Facebook. These are the foundational policies. The policies, principles, rights and responsibilities are really the foundation for the things we are going to build. The rules for how we want to govern the site.
What we’re talking about today is policy, not product.
We are open to putting the documents up to a vote. The rules people must do when on the site and what we must do, a two way thing. There will be Comment periods, a council that will help on future revisions.
” We do not own user data, they own their data. We never intended to give that impression and we feel bad that we did.” This document is a foundation that we’re going to use our decisions going forward.”
Q: How did you go about changing the terms of service last time?
Zuckerberg: The terms were similar to what other sites have. We actually shortened our terms from 15 pages to something much smaller. But we made some mistakes, and the complaints were completely fair. But what we’re doing now is totally unprecedented.
Q: Who decides what the vote determines? What if you disagree with them?
Schrage: We feel confident they’ll make good decisions..
Q: You’ve been here before. Did you not learn from Beacon that people will rebel against changes in Terms of Service?
Zuckerberg: Beacon wasn’t a change in Terms of Service. This was a dialog around the governing terms of the site. People use a lot of services on the web, but this is one of the only ones where they’re sharing their information.
Schrage: Part of the challenge is that what was proposed with new ToS is remarkably consistent with what other sites have their ToS. Some of the blogs criticizing our ToS had Terms that were just as broad, but Mark’s point is that people share so much more on Facebook so we have to be held to a higher standard.
Q: You mentioned that the amount of user involvement here is unprecedented. As an increasingly international organization, some of these continents like Europe have more stringent laws. What are your considerations for international laws?
Ted: We of course pay attention to the laws…
Q: Can you comment on steps Facebook is taking to determine phishing, malware?
Schrage: That’s not really the purpose of the call today, feel free to contact us about that later.
Q: You were already asked about Beacon. What could you have learned from the News Feed response? How do you manage expectations to people Twittering that you’re allowing users to write your ToS?
Zuckerberg: We’re going to build product according to the goals we’re laying out. We should have been communicating about these products more broadly.
Q: Is there not a need for contract language somewhere?
Ted: I encourage you to look at the statement of rights and responsibilities. We have not just what you see as the ToS for users, but also for advertisers and developers. We have shrunk 44 pages of material to around 5.5 in this document including all three of those terms.
That concludes the call.
just testin you fb connect
If Facebook is genuine about their willingness to listen to user input on the very important issue of user privacy and ownership of personal information, then I applaud them
I have been one of the more vocal critics of Facebook in this regard, but I do welcome this gesture of openness and constructive dialogue. I hope Facebook and other companies will learn that abusing user’s trust is not just bad, it is also bad business.
From India
Anjali Sen
The purpose of Facebook is to make the world more transparent and open.
I don’t mean to look a gift horse in the mouth, but this just doesn’t jibe. The question is how the TOS change happened if indeed their entire purpose is transparency and openness? For thee but not for me?
They have been open and transparent, but that’s existed only at the product level until now. Look at all their products and services and you’ll see a vast amount of openness and transparency in all of them. You have extensive controls for privacy and know exactly what’s happen with your data at any time. This is the first time they’ve had to apply to to a policy change, not a product change.
Facebook sadly seem to be going all “eBay” with their TOS.
I think some of the bigger properties learn a lot from Amazon in terms of customer service.
Liveblogging about a facebook conference call. Is such a thing REALLY necessary?
I don´t understant english very much,but the article is great.
I hope this “improvemnts” wil be good.
it seems facebook is doing a whole lot of backtracking
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this is simply a pr gimmick to backtrack on another really Bad IDEA!
oh my. this is bad
http://tr.im/gOUl
Sooner or later Facebook will be forced to find a way to get exclusive rights on content to increase it asset then convert it to ROI. The new TOS were an important point concerning plans to launch new services and achieving financial goals but the way they did it was wrong. I’m excited to know how Facebook will handle this.
I don’t want my data to be monetized by FaceBook or third parties running apps or doing business on Facebook.
I want to OPT OUT of any method FB has of monetizing user data. I think we have that right.
ok…
but would pay for facebook?
FB is very expensive to run. If you don’t want them to monetize, then a) hope for a fremium model or b) don’t be on facebook
Hi Marc,
this will happen sooner or later I think.
Well, that will be great if FB gets us to contribute to the new ToS. That’s really unprecedented!
After reading all of this I am now in a fiasco due to terms of service though did NOT violate them nor get any warning but FB disabled my account last night… FB not responding… any ideas for help or how to contact as e-mails going unresponded to–should be MORE user friendly not less as just happened and no warning. : – (