In the past few days, Facebook has faced a public firing squad for the changes it quietly made to it's Terms of Service (TOS). Because Facebook plays a role in the day-to-day life of this blog, The Hour, The Strombo Show and many of our readers, I thought I would assemble all the information into a timeline of events to start a discussion about Facebook and their terms of use.
It all started on Wednesday, February 4th, Facebook announced on their "behind-the-scenes" blog that they were changing their terms of use, effective that day:
We want to let you know that today we're updating our Terms of Use—the rules you and Facebook agree to when you sign up to use the site. We used to have several different documents that outlined what people could and could not do on Facebook, but now we're consolidating all this information to one central place. We've also simplified and clarified a lot of information that applies to you, including some things you shouldn't do when using the site.Most of these things are pretty obvious; you probably wouldn't ever do them. For example, you probably don't "provide any false personal information in your profile" or "intimidate or harass other users." But in order to help Facebook remain a safe and trusted environment, we think it's important to specifically mention behaviors like these in the "Prohibited Conduct" section.As always, protecting your privacy and information is of the utmost importance to us, and these updates provide you with the same level of protection you have come to expect from Facebook.
This information remained relatively quiet and unknown to the majority of Facebook users until late last week, when the news started making the rounds of Facebook users and finally hit the news outlets earlier this week. The Consumerist was one of the first to announce the changes on February 15th:
Facebook's terms of service (TOS) used to say that when you closed an account on their network, any rights they claimed to the original content you uploaded would expire. Not anymore.
Now, anything you upload to Facebook can be used by Facebook in any way they deem fit, forever, no matter what you do later.* Want to close your account? Good for you, but Facebook still has the right to do whatever it wants with your old content. They can even sublicense it if they want.
You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.That language is the same as in the old TOS, but there was an important couple of lines at the end of that section that have been removed:
You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.Furthermore, the "Termination" section near the end of the TOS states:
The following sections will survive any termination of your use of the Facebook Service: Prohibited Conduct, User Content, Your Privacy Practices, Gift Credits, Ownership; Proprietary Rights, Licenses, Submissions, User Disputes; Complaints, Indemnity, General Disclaimers, Limitation on Liability, Termination and Changes to the Facebook Service, Arbitration, Governing Law; Venue and Jurisdiction and Other.Make sure you never upload anything you don't feel comfortable giving away forever, because it's Facebook's now.
(Note that as several readers have pointed out, this seems to be subject to your privacy settings, so anything you've protected from full public view doesn't seem to be usable in other ways regardless.)
Oh, you also agree to arbitration, naturally. Have fun with that.
Once this was posted on the Consumerist website, the news spread like wildfire causing concern and great consternation from Facebook users and technological experts alike. Incensed Facebook users started groups on Facebook protesting the changes and the media ran wild with the story, causing a media storm that Facebook claimed it never expected to happen. In the middle of the storm, Mark Zuckerberg, made the following statement on the Facebook blog claiming that the changes to the terms were being taken out of context:
A couple of weeks ago, we updated our terms of use to clarify a few points for our users. A number of people have raised questions about our changes, so I'd like to address those here. I'll also take the opportunity to explain how we think about people's information.Our philosophy is that people own their information and control who 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.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.We still have work to do to communicate more clearly about these issues, and our terms are one example of this. Our philosophy that people own their information and control who they share it with has remained constant. A lot of the language in our terms is overly formal and protective of the rights we need to provide this service to you. Over time we will continue to clarify our positions and make the terms simpler.Still, the interesting thing about this change in our terms is that it highlights the importance of these issues and their complexity. People want full ownership and control of their information so they can turn off access to it at any time. At the same time, people also want to be able to bring the information others have shared with them—like email addresses, phone numbers, photos and so on—to other services and grant those services access to those people's information. These two positions are at odds with each other. There is no system today that enables me to share my email address with you and then simultaneously lets me control who you share it with and also lets you control what services you share it with.We're at an interesting point in the development of the open online world where these issues are being worked out. It's difficult terrain to navigate and we're going to make some missteps, but as the leading service for sharing information we take these issues and our responsibility to help resolve them very seriously. This is a big focus for us this year, and I'll post some more thoughts on openness and these other issues soon.
By Wednesday morning, Facebook had backed down. Facebook users signed in to see a message at the top of their news feeds and profiles explaining the situation and Mark Zuckerberg had posted another update on the Facebook blog:
A couple of weeks ago, we revised our terms of use hoping to clarify some parts for our users. Over the past couple of days, we received a lot of questions and comments about the changes and what they mean for people and their information. Based on this feedback, we have decided to return to our previous terms of use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.Many of us at Facebook spent most of today discussing how best to move forward. One approach would have been to quickly amend the new terms with new language to clarify our positions further. Another approach was simply to revert to our old terms while we begin working on our next version. As we thought through this, we reached out to respected organizations to get their input.Going forward, we've decided to take a new approach towards developing our terms. We concluded that returning to our previous terms was the right thing for now. As I said yesterday, we think that a lot of the language in our terms is overly formal and protective so we don't plan to leave it there for long.More than 175 million people use Facebook. If it were a country, it would be the sixth most populated country in the world. Our terms aren't just a document that protect our rights; it's the governing document for how the service is used by everyone across the world. Given its importance, we need to make sure the terms reflect the principles and values of the people using the service.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.If you'd like to get involved in crafting our new terms, you can start posting your questions, comments and requests in the group we've created—Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities. I'm looking forward to reading your input.
So what do you think? Are these changes to the terms of use on Facebook an issue for you? Was the outcry necessary? Let us know what you think.
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