Like myself I am sure most of you are Facebook users. So when I came across an article on CNN.com, Facebook backs down, reverses on user information policy, it caught my attention. Facebook has changed its policy back to the old one after a lot of negative feedback from its users. About a month ago Facebook changed a sentence in its policy. It used to say that Facebook could not claim any rights to what its users uploaded. They changed it to "You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. ... (H)owever, you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content. After an uproar by about 64,000 users who either cancelled their accounts or created petitions online Facebook decided to go back to the original policy.
When I was on Facebook today I read the message that was sent to its users about this, but I didn’t know what it was all about. I also didn’t take the time to look into it further. I am glad that so many people look at the policy and realize this because if I ever do cancel my account I would like to know that anything I put up isn’t able to be used by others. I don’t think it is right for Facebook to change their policy to they own everything you upload without letting us know. I didn’t know it was even changed till after it was put back to the original.
The Facebook owners are definitely trying to keep good public relations with everyone on this topic. The Chief Executive has made statements saying Facebook never wanted the policy to look like they were taking the rights of people’s information. It is nice to see they are bending to their user’s wishes. They are also working on rewording the policy to make it easier to understand.
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I was just talking to my co-workers about this. If I understood this right, only Facebook would actually have use of the content for use as they saw fit--other users would not have it. But it still caused a big stir. Frankly, I don't think I really want them using my content for their self-promotion whether I have an account now or not. But since I'm careful not to put much on my site, I'm not too worried about it.
ReplyDeleteIt's unprofessional of the Facebook company to not inform the users of the switch until after it has taken effect. I also don't see where they would get their claim to the content that we select to put on there. That just doesn't seem fair to me. I am glad that they returned to the previous policy.
ReplyDeleteFacebook has become the text messaging of this decade. Yet because it is faceless many people who use the service place a lot personal data on the site. Never realizing that the entire world now knows your personal business.
ReplyDeleteWe have cautioned our kids not to reveal too much on Facebook – look what happened last week. Facebook took down a multitude of sites that were put up by sex offenders trying to lure kids to meeting them.
As for the rules of Facebook, they are one of a number of companies who publish disclaimers. This is one I found on Gadgetsworld – “all pricing subject to change. For all prices, products and offers, Gadgets World reserves the right to make adjustments due to changing market conditions, product discontinuation, manufacturer price changes, errors in advertisements and other extenuating circumstances.”