FACEBOOK SCANDAL, VERSION 2.0 by Michael S. Malone
The events of this week surrounding Facebook are a troubling glimpse of life with the Web of the future.
In case you missed the coverage, here’s a quick recap: At the beginning of this week, the blog The Consumerist noticed that Facebook had quietly changed its ‘terms of service’ to its users. It apparently was the first to notice this change, despite the fact that it occurred two weeks before.
In full-blown legalese, Facebook basically told its users that when they posted personal information to their Facebook pages (including photos, the music they were listening to at that moment or their favorite movies), Facebook owned that information forever and could use it in just about any manner the company wished.
Facebook’s apparent secretiveness in making the switch suggested that it anticipated a backlash if word got out.
This being the age of the Blogosphere, in which a vast army of citizen journalists are continuously picking over every government and corporate document (would the traditional media have ever spotted this change, much less written about it?), Facebook should have known that its little maneuver would not go unnoticed for long. And indeed, once word got out, all hell broke out across the Internet.
Facebook quickly moved to put out the fire. By Monday afternoon, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had already responded on his blog, saying: “Our philosophy is that people own their information and control whom they share it with.
“When a person shares information on Facebook, they first need to grant Facebook a license to use that information so that we can show it to the other people they’ve asked us to share it with. Without this license, we couldn’t help people share that information.”
Needless to say, anybody who read this comment and then looked at the very precise terminology of the new terms of service, found Zuckerberg’s comments a bit … disingenuous.
Keep in mind, that was just on Monday – we’re talking Internet time here, so things are speeded up about 10X, and it’s not unusual anymore to have a scandal erupt, spread around the planet, be commented on by hundreds of web sites, mobilize political action groups in response, and die down soon thereafter.
And that’s pretty much what happened here. By Tuesday, the entire Web world was talking about the Facebook problem.
Great piece, Mike. This is exactly why I have stopped using facebook, and other social networking sites.
It’s free of charge for a reason, and they will need to cash in somehow.
Oddly, this week I have had many people badgering me to get back on facebook. I wonder why?
~ Paula
When they are unable to sustain their business model, you will see them seated next to Obama at a little Washington soiree.
The government will pay for the info. For sure.
I could never understand the appeal of putting yourself “on display”.And yet people who do are all concerned with privacy.Go figure.
from Mike Malone:
Thanks for the comments (hi Paula!) We’ll be running a Scott Budman blog on the same topic tomorrow.
It’s amusing how so many people who now want to own their info were on the opposite of the issue when it came to music downloads and intellectual copyright. As long as the info isn’t theirs, they think it should be free and available.
Great, since people on facebook have their credit card information to buy their friend gifts and so on. That means that facebook also owns their bank account. True, some people want to be displayed to everyone around the world and noticed, but there are others who just want to have a easy way to connect with all of their friends. It would be sad to see people get arrested for pictures they post or comments that are “sketchy”
well, it’s the responsibility of the people who use facebook not to put anything personal on the page. of course when something goes online it’s not yours anymore, oh well, doesn’t matter either way, the government already controls us, why not this too?
The idea that you are going to keep something approaching privacy is crazy. Facebook is just a minor commercial site. The push for on line records will be followed by online professional credentials and then school records. Your permanant record really will be permanent for those under forty. Only those old enough that their records were diaposed of before being scanned in will have any privacy.