Facebook Terms Of Service Controversy

February 18th, 2009 by Castina

Popular social networking site Facebook changed its terms of service two weeks ago, and boy did that stir up a stink. The new TOS stated that Facebook owned all your pictures, information, and anything you wrote on your account, even after you close it.

This upset many Facebook fans, who decided to protest the move–a lot. The 88,000-member-strong “People Against the New Terms of Service” Facebook group was one of the most outspoken opponents of the new policy.

On Wednesday Facebook released this statement, stating that is doing away with its new Terms of Service agreement and going back to the old way of doing things.

Terms of Use Update

Over the past few days, we have received a lot of good feedback about the new terms we posted two weeks ago. Because of this response, we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.

Thoughts on this?

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2 Responses to “Facebook Terms Of Service Controversy”

On February 18th 2009, buzz wrote:

Old terms were just as bad as new terms.

Facebook STILL claims ownership of anything posted to the site.

Anyone using it for more than a glorified business card are signing a life of content away.

http://www.cyberbuzz.com/2009/02/18/all-your-facebook-are-belong-to-zuck/

Like Agent Mulder used to say – Trust NOONE.
On February 19th 2009, Tom H. C. Anderson wrote:

Agree with the reaction to the new TOS, but felt the response by Zuckenberg was good. I posted about it on my blog yesterday, along with some tips for Facebook and other companies who may be involved in managing CGM. We’ve done a lot of work in this area, and these companies need to learn to trust their user community a bit more, if they do they can even be leveraged to keep moderation costs down etc.

Post here: http://www.tomhcanderson.com/2009/02/18/we-the-people-of-facebook/

Tom H. C. Anderson
Managing Partner
Anderson Analytics, LLC