Earlier this week, the blogs, Facebook and even the Washington Post and New York Times were up in arms over the news of changes in Facebook’s terms of service. The blog, The Consumerist, broke the story: Facebook changed the language of their terms of service to reflect the fact that the company may still archive material that you post, even after you delete your account. The blog took this to mean that Facebook would now “own” anything you post on the site. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s creator, tried to quickly quell the controversy by posting a blog telling Facebookers that their information is safe, and the change in terms of service was only meant to reflect what was going on already- that is, any material you post may still live on Facebook even if you delete your account.
In order for Facebook to be able to post your content on their site, you have to give them license to do so. Zuckerberg emphasized that information you post would only be used for its intended purpose and that by altering your privacy settings you can prevent items from being completely public. For example, if you post photos, the photos may still live on, even if you deleted your account, but Zuckerberg is not going to try and sell them toUS Weekly. There are consequences to anything that you make public and the internet is no exception. Zuckerberg explains:
People want full ownership and control of their information so they can turn off access to it at any time. At the same time, people also want to be able to bring the information others have shared with them—like email addresses, phone numbers, photos and so on—to other services and grant those services access to those people’s information. These two positions are at odds with each other.
As you may have heard by now, Facebook has changed their terms of service language back to the way it was before the controversy. But just because the language changed, doesn’t mean this issue is dead. As I was scouring the internet for more information on this topic, I remembered an Economist article that came out in their “World in 2009” issue late last year. The article centers on the idea of “Rambam’s Law,” coined by private investigator, Steven Rambam. He says that no matter what purpose a piece of information has been created for, it will ultimately be used for some other purpose. In most cases of privacy, we are our own worst enemy. Information that used to be considered private is now up for public consumption. Rambam says that clients used to pay him to investigate people’s history, friends and whereabouts- information that is now readily available on the internet.
With all of this information right at your fingertips, the gap between what you want to share and your privacy is narrowing. Items that you may feel “belong” to you might not- the internet is a public forum and you relinquish a certain amount of control by posting on it. However, the user still has a lot of control of what gets posted and what doesn’t. I would urge anyone considering social media not to be scared away by the lack of privacy or excessive worries of someone stealing your logo. If it were the case that Facebook could steal your University logo just because it was posted on Facebook, then New York Times articles, YouTube videos and personal websites would also belong to Facebook, or Google or any other aggregator of content. The internet and sites like Facebook can ultimately do your institution more good than harm as long as a bit of common sense and vigilance is applied.
No Comments