I recently came across the above video above on Youtube. Even though this video dates back to 2010, it is of surprise to me that I did not know about this matter until now.
Facebook, apparently altered some its ‘Terms of Use’ in 2010, removing the language that read, Facebook’s “ownership of our content would end when we remove or close our account’ meaning that Facebook will save and continue to use our personal information and pictures even after we close or deactivate our account. What is even worse it that Facebook ‘quietly and suddenly’ changed their terms without sharing and bringing it to the attention to its Facebook users, as this matter was only found and publicized by an independent blogger. After much protest, Mark Zuckerberg replied with only a post to reassure Facebook users stating that ‘in reality, we would not share your information in a way you would not want. The trust you place in us as a safe place to share information is the most important part of what makes Facebook work.’
But the problem is Facebook already lost my trust by ‘quietly and suddenly’ changing the terms without publicly announcing it to its users, meaning they knew it was something sort of shady as well. And no reasonable person would trust a website that would still retain their information even after they deactivated the account. What is the point of deactivating it then? However the most disturbing thing of all is that Facebook has the right to keep all your information, to sell it to a third party if they like, and there is nothing you can do about it; no undoing the done. This scares me and reminds me of one of my classmate’s post Facebook Legal Notice- where Facebook, without her permission used her pictures. This is definitely an invasion of privacy and I wonder if Congress has done anything to stop it.
Your post reminds me of a South Park episode where they parodied Apple.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=sglZGSwK6ow#t=42s
The TOS of many services we use today are extremely long and full of jargon that most of us don’t have the time or patience to read it in it’s entirety. We’ve always been told to read everything we sign especially legally binding contracts, which is what a TOS basically is, but the ease of checking a box or clicking accept has made us lazy. Most TOS agreements have a clause or line in there that says something a long the lines of “these terms and conditions are subject to change without prior notice at any time.” Even knowing this and the sort of implications it has the majority of us will still never bother to read the TOS. Luckily there are people out there, such as that independent blogger you mentioned, that still care and are fighting the good fight.
As the previous comment stated, we are always told to read the agreements before accepting anything. A majority of us won’t even consider reading the terms of use. However as you stated they suddenly and quietly altered there terms of use without bringing it to our attention. I wasn’t aware that Facebook did that until I actually searched for my name on Google, and a whole bunch of images from not only my Facebook account came up but from other social networks such as Twitter. I found it to be weird since I deactivated my Facebook account; at the time it hadn’t been up and running for about 4 months. That’s how I knew Facebook wasn’t as safe and secure as they said they were.