“Don’t be evil“, the informal corporate Google motto, doesn’t seem to count for social networking website Facebook. While (online) privacy is becoming a bigger concern day after day, Facebook changed their Terms of Use in favor of, yes you guessed it, Facebook.
Most people don’t seem to know (or recognize) they give up the rights to everything they post on Facebook:
“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.“
But nothing new so far. The really new thing in the Facebook Terms of Use is that deleting your content or even your account is no longer preventing Facebook from using it. These lines were removed during the last revision:
“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.“
In other words, everything you post, share and upload to Facebook will be Facebook property… FOREVER…
Puts things in a whole different perspective, doesn’t it? If you don’t like the new Terms of Use, join the People Against the new Terms of Service (TOS) group on, indeed, Facebook…