Facebook Launches Facebook Bill of Rights, Reverts to Previous Terms of Use

Written by Rick Turoczy / February 17, 2009 11:00 PM / 16 Comments

If you read any tech publication this week, you couldn't have helped but encounter the brouhaha over Facebook's revised Terms of Use. Now, Facebook has decided to return to its previous Terms - dated September 23, 2008 - until it can better determine how to proceed. To help ensure they don't make the same mistakes again, they've also started the "Facebook Bill of Rights," a Facebook group formed specifically to allow people "to give input and suggestions on Facebook's Terms of Use."

We had seen rumblings of concern over the Facebook Terms of Use as early as February 9, but it wasn't until The Consumerist posted "We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever" that the deluge of criticism broke free. More than 6,000 diggs and hundreds of blog posts later, and suddenly Facebook was the target of a Federal complaint.

While there remains an ongoing debate about how overbearing the terms legally were, Facebook has decided to revert back to its previous terms, according to a post by Mark Zuckerberg:

"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."

Who's right? Who's wrong? Who knows? One thing is for sure: we'll be keeping an eye on the Facebook Bill of Rights and Terms of Use page for the next chapter in this ongoing saga.

Comments

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Certainly a pattern emerging, Facebook tries something, users don't like it, they backtrack. Good to know complaints have an effect.

Posted by: Kat Scholtz | February 17, 2009 11:49 PM

Facebook...what a bunch of Aholes

Posted by: mano | February 18, 2009 12:47 AM

And another overblown internet outrage session comes to a close.

Posted by: Eric B | February 18, 2009 6:55 AM

My biggest problem with the new TOS is that Facebook makes no distinction in personal data. It was a blanket policy saying everything you put here is ours forever. A message I send someone privately is completely different from a photo I post publicly. If I terminate my Facebook account, it's understandable that the message would stay there, but I wouldn't expect people to still access the photos.

I think they were just being lazy.

Posted by: J Lane | February 18, 2009 7:54 AM

While perception is reality, and the emotional response suggests that Facebook needs to do a better job of being consultative with its community versus delivering material edicts from on high, the truth is that this is much ado about nothing.

We create a "snail trail" when we plug into communities online, that snail trail becomes substrate that interconnects with other users and discussion threads.

It's just not reasonable to expect that you can rip that out, creating virtual potholes in the communal space.

Also, why do we begrudge Facebook as nefarious for wanting to monetize these snail trails when we happily accept Google monetizing our traversals, web pages, images and the like? Itâs just silly, in my opinion.

Check out:

Why Facebookâs Terms of Service Change is Much Ado About Nothing.
(http://bit.ly/xxE4d)

For more fodder on this one.

Mark

Posted by: Mark Sigal | February 18, 2009 9:47 AM

I must say that it IS interesting to me how democratic the process facebook uses is. The use of the term "Bill of Rights" is no accident.

I wrote up a little bit more about the topic at my website, check it out

Posted by: nick Arora | February 19, 2009 7:06 PM

It makes no sense that Facebook would risk messing up a good thing by edging in on people's intellectual property. They had people's trust and then they go and risk losing it; not smart.

Posted by: coffee | February 22, 2009 1:15 AM

i have been posting in the bill of rights forum (even though its full of garbage posts flooding the entire thing)

yet after a few days of actively involving myself in the issue, i notice it is no longer in my groups...

i cannot search for it on facebook...

I did however catch the link from google, and I can view and look at all the pages on the group, but I CAN'T re-join, I CAN'T post, and I did not leave or delete the group from my page.

Whats going on here?

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