Since My Content Is Yours Facebook I Think I Need to Find Some New Hobbies
I usually tend to consider those terms of service agreements on Web sites as nothing more than an inconvenient step on my way to signing up for something fun. Every service you sign up for these days seems to have their own individual agreement, but I always say that if there was really anything wrong with the agreement all those millions of other people out there wouldn't have signed up, right?
I'm probably not going to change my thoughts much on that, but after this past week I might take another millisecond before clicking yes I (blindly) agree to the terms of this service agreement on the next pointless online service I sign up for.
That's because this past week I've seen more news about terms of service agreements than I had ever thought could be drummed up about a seemingly meaningless nuance. Who knew this stuff actually meant something?
Well it does. Just ask Facebook, who changed their agreement thinking every consumer would react much like I probably would have and then ask the tens of thousands of Facebook users, bloggers and consumer advocacy groups who spoke out and even threatened to sue. It's kind of like that nugget of advice you got from your parents when you were, well a teenager, and then you grew up and it smacks you in the head. "Huh, so you were for real about that?"
First off, most of us look at those terms of service agreement screen that pops up in a little window inside our window that makes the terms of service look tiny and concise. Well, they are anything but. When it comes to Facebook the terms of service could double as a research paper or legal contract. Interesting, because that's what it is. The agreement looks like a 10-page term paper filled with "legalese" (fancy word for fancy legal language … imagine if this whole article was written with words like that) that we rarely take seriously as users, possibly because we can't but also because we don't understand the repercussions.
Forgive me, but even my wildest dreams don't include me staring down founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, in a courtroom. As far as I'm concerned it's just not happening.
It seems like that's the way Facebook wants it too. When I first heard about this terms of service mess I went in and brought up the terms of service thinking I would be able pick out the issues and analyze them. Boy was I wrong. The legalese I mentioned is almost too nice of a term to describe what I saw. I'm in college and quickly realized even a run-of-the-mill law degree wouldn't make me capable understand the psychotic mass of letter and words. I would have had more luck reading Mandarin Chinese hanging upside down in a dark closet.
"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 tears) and User Content you (i) Post….." blah, blah, blah, you get the message.
If you made it through that jungle of a sentence and are still with me you should know that was 53 words wasted, when a simple, "We can take your content and do whatever we want with it," would have sufficed. Never mind the fact that we go school for 13, sometimes 17 or even 20 years of lives, being drowned in red ink for writing run on sentences. Yet I believe that sentence came in at a cool 106 words. Give or take a few.
I guess when you are used to using three commas just to write down your salary you're not going to have a problem using a slew more in writing the legal documents that will save your behind and allow you to make even more money.
As entertaining as it may be to analyze the non-existent grammar rules in legal writing, it's not the most important subject. All the long sentences and commas serve to do is distract the reader from being able to understand that their content on Facebook is no longer theirs.
Aside from the fact that I would love to see Zuckerberg and the Facebook team "publicly perform or display" some of the pictures from parties I saw posted this weekend, it's slightly alarming that Facebook could possibly own your content. According to researchers, consumer advocates and media outlets, the old Facebook terms of service told users that agreements in the terms of service would be terminated upon deletion of a Facebook account. Apparently the new terms of service did not have this provision and was not as clear about how users privacy settings could be used to protect their content from being claimed by Facebook.
What, perhaps, should be more alarming to all Facebook users is that even the old Facebook terms of service give Facebook claim to your public content unless you delete your account. The amount of personal information passed from wall to wall and in our photographs should make you think about who exactly is seeing your information besides the intended person(s).
Similar consumer concern surfaced in 2007 with Facebook and its Beacon advertising service. I've often thought how interesting it is that a lot of the ads on my facebook account have to do with baseball products. It shouldn't be surprising since ads are being tailored to you based off of the public information you provide in your Facebook account.
It seems like we've all learned to "just deal" with those intrusions. Now that I think about it through, I could probably have a little fun with it. Tomorrow maybe I'll get on my Facebook and change my hobbies and interests to cricket, botchy ball, crab racing, curling, ferret legging, extreme ironing and (my personal favorite) mountain unicycling (or MUni as the 'pros' call it). I'd love to see the variety of ads on my page after a having those up for a while.
If Facebook and Beacon advertising are trying to sell me the best ferrets on the market by the end of the week I'll have to tip my cap.
The fact that the developers at Facebook seem unaffected by users concerns despite the consumer outrage over Facebook "betraying" users by allowing an advertising agency to tailor ads to their interests and uproar from users about the switch from "old Facebook" to "new Facebook" makes it interesting to see that Facebook actually backed off its new terms of service agreement this week. Instead, the company actually listened to consumers and went back to the old terms, "temporarily."
Ironically, the move may not have been anything but an attempt to save face, or whatever is still left of it at Facebook. Inevitably, I assume the new terms of service will be back shortly (i.e., when Zuckerberg and his developers have fed enough public relations jargon to users and sufficiently muddied up their legalese beyond recognition).
Maybe that will point when we all start to think twice about the content we put on Facebook.
Or, more likely, that will just be the day Facebook takes ownership of my newest weekend hobbies… ferret legging and mountain unicycling. Maybe they will even join the extreme ironing circuit with me. I mean since they are so interested in my personal life, after all..
I'm probably not going to change my thoughts much on that, but after this past week I might take another millisecond before clicking yes I (blindly) agree to the terms of this service agreement on the next pointless online service I sign up for.
That's because this past week I've seen more news about terms of service agreements than I had ever thought could be drummed up about a seemingly meaningless nuance. Who knew this stuff actually meant something?
Well it does. Just ask Facebook, who changed their agreement thinking every consumer would react much like I probably would have and then ask the tens of thousands of Facebook users, bloggers and consumer advocacy groups who spoke out and even threatened to sue. It's kind of like that nugget of advice you got from your parents when you were, well a teenager, and then you grew up and it smacks you in the head. "Huh, so you were for real about that?"
First off, most of us look at those terms of service agreement screen that pops up in a little window inside our window that makes the terms of service look tiny and concise. Well, they are anything but. When it comes to Facebook the terms of service could double as a research paper or legal contract. Interesting, because that's what it is. The agreement looks like a 10-page term paper filled with "legalese" (fancy word for fancy legal language … imagine if this whole article was written with words like that) that we rarely take seriously as users, possibly because we can't but also because we don't understand the repercussions.
Forgive me, but even my wildest dreams don't include me staring down founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, in a courtroom. As far as I'm concerned it's just not happening.
It seems like that's the way Facebook wants it too. When I first heard about this terms of service mess I went in and brought up the terms of service thinking I would be able pick out the issues and analyze them. Boy was I wrong. The legalese I mentioned is almost too nice of a term to describe what I saw. I'm in college and quickly realized even a run-of-the-mill law degree wouldn't make me capable understand the psychotic mass of letter and words. I would have had more luck reading Mandarin Chinese hanging upside down in a dark closet.
"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 tears) and User Content you (i) Post….." blah, blah, blah, you get the message.
If you made it through that jungle of a sentence and are still with me you should know that was 53 words wasted, when a simple, "We can take your content and do whatever we want with it," would have sufficed. Never mind the fact that we go school for 13, sometimes 17 or even 20 years of lives, being drowned in red ink for writing run on sentences. Yet I believe that sentence came in at a cool 106 words. Give or take a few.
I guess when you are used to using three commas just to write down your salary you're not going to have a problem using a slew more in writing the legal documents that will save your behind and allow you to make even more money.
As entertaining as it may be to analyze the non-existent grammar rules in legal writing, it's not the most important subject. All the long sentences and commas serve to do is distract the reader from being able to understand that their content on Facebook is no longer theirs.
Aside from the fact that I would love to see Zuckerberg and the Facebook team "publicly perform or display" some of the pictures from parties I saw posted this weekend, it's slightly alarming that Facebook could possibly own your content. According to researchers, consumer advocates and media outlets, the old Facebook terms of service told users that agreements in the terms of service would be terminated upon deletion of a Facebook account. Apparently the new terms of service did not have this provision and was not as clear about how users privacy settings could be used to protect their content from being claimed by Facebook.
What, perhaps, should be more alarming to all Facebook users is that even the old Facebook terms of service give Facebook claim to your public content unless you delete your account. The amount of personal information passed from wall to wall and in our photographs should make you think about who exactly is seeing your information besides the intended person(s).
Similar consumer concern surfaced in 2007 with Facebook and its Beacon advertising service. I've often thought how interesting it is that a lot of the ads on my facebook account have to do with baseball products. It shouldn't be surprising since ads are being tailored to you based off of the public information you provide in your Facebook account.
It seems like we've all learned to "just deal" with those intrusions. Now that I think about it through, I could probably have a little fun with it. Tomorrow maybe I'll get on my Facebook and change my hobbies and interests to cricket, botchy ball, crab racing, curling, ferret legging, extreme ironing and (my personal favorite) mountain unicycling (or MUni as the 'pros' call it). I'd love to see the variety of ads on my page after a having those up for a while.
If Facebook and Beacon advertising are trying to sell me the best ferrets on the market by the end of the week I'll have to tip my cap.
The fact that the developers at Facebook seem unaffected by users concerns despite the consumer outrage over Facebook "betraying" users by allowing an advertising agency to tailor ads to their interests and uproar from users about the switch from "old Facebook" to "new Facebook" makes it interesting to see that Facebook actually backed off its new terms of service agreement this week. Instead, the company actually listened to consumers and went back to the old terms, "temporarily."
Ironically, the move may not have been anything but an attempt to save face, or whatever is still left of it at Facebook. Inevitably, I assume the new terms of service will be back shortly (i.e., when Zuckerberg and his developers have fed enough public relations jargon to users and sufficiently muddied up their legalese beyond recognition).
Maybe that will point when we all start to think twice about the content we put on Facebook.
Or, more likely, that will just be the day Facebook takes ownership of my newest weekend hobbies… ferret legging and mountain unicycling. Maybe they will even join the extreme ironing circuit with me. I mean since they are so interested in my personal life, after all..
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