Facebook Privacy Kerfuffle
Last week after an article on Consumerist.com brought up Facebook’s new Terms of Use (since rescinded), a bit of a kerfuffle ensued. Blogs were full of posts about how this was unacceptable and Facebook groups were formed to protest the change and some people even joined groups say they were going to delete their accounts if the policy wasn’t changed back (or to something else). For a good summary, see Katherine Lynch’s blog post about the situation.
For the most part, I just sat by on the sidelines and smiled. First off, although people didn’t like Facebook’s explanation, they were correct when they explained that section of the policy did say it was subject to a users privacy settings. More importantly, while I would like some things to be kept to my friends, it is just unrealistic to expect in this day and age. Maybe I shouldn’t by so cynical but the reality is that if you share stuff with people, you have to expect that it might get out.
I’m a realist to know that Facebook might find a way to use what I post for some reason, friends can see what I posted so they can share it, and also understand that Facebook is a big target for hackers. Thus, there is nothing that makes me believe anything I post will remain private. I understand this is a trade-off for using this service. With that in mind I don’t post anything I don’t expect others to see. I can understand that might feel only slightly comforting to some, but it is good enough for me.
Also, and probably more importantly, I believe in Open Access. With that in mind, I have no problem with people using the content I post in other ways. In fact about the only thing this latest kerfuffle has changed with my actions on Facebook is that I have decided to explixitly license the my original content that I post on Facebook under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States. I am also doing the same with my Twitter account. My ‘dents’ on Identi.ca, like all data on the service, continues to be available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.
John B said,
February 20, 2009 @ 02:02:04
I just can’t believe they went back on their TOS change. People are dumb if they think they are getting any privacy from Facebook or Myspace. All they are doing is voluntarily supplying valuable info to huge marketing mills. Although there are ways to communicate with privacy: anonymous sites like http://www.anonboard.com
Elizabeth Krumbach said,
February 22, 2009 @ 08:02:29
Hurrah for Open Content! Having worked in F/OSS for so long the “natural state” of things feels like they should be free. I’ve even loosened my feelings about Attribution considerably when it comes to my own content.
Regarding your license, doesn’t Facebook claiming ownership of the content in their ToS mean that it can be used by them commercially?
ecorrado said,
February 22, 2009 @ 11:02:32
Elizabeth,
Facebook does claim that they can use it commercially (although subject to privacy settings, so I’m not really sure what that means). In this case, the CC license doesn’t really have any effect on Facebook except if it gives them more rights than the TOS does. The license more applies to the everyone else.
Being in academics, citations are important which is why I keep the attribution. Sure, if someone doesn’t cite a tweet, it doesn’t mean anything, but if I have a longer essay it does and I want to keep it simple for me.
I’m also not really against letting people use things commercially, but I keep it non-commercial because I want to be notified and it may become an issue if the content was submitted elsewhere.
byn said,
February 23, 2009 @ 22:02:14
I just like the fact that you used the word kerfuffle.
Thrice.