Now I am not a fan of Facebook, I just don’t seem to get it as such, but my wife and daughters are, and that is why my eye caught an interesting article the other day about Facebook changing its TOS.
On February 4th, the largest social network by all accounts, Facebook, quietly updated it’s terms of service to grant itself an unending and irrevocable license to use all content ever uploaded to its service.
You might think to yourself, I will then close my account and good for you,but Facebook still has the right to do whatever it wants with your old content. They can even sublicense it if they want.
So just be careful not to upload any content to Facebook except links. Links merely point to the actual content. Most blogs and content site these days provide a “Share with Facebook” tool that will allow readers (or yourself) submit content to Facebook. The sticky point is that you are not actually uploading the photo, or the video to Facebook itself. Merely an excerpt and thumbnail.
Unfortunately, this thing slid through in the dead of night without so much as a peep and you’re expected to swallow the pill and be happy with it. Facebook never offered you a chance to decline the new TOS, nor did they offer to grandfather content previously uploaded. So feel free to delete stuff you never meant to give away for any constructive or nefarious purpose out there – it’s gone.
I wouldn’t go as far as saying to cancel your account with Facebook, after all it is the largest Social network but just be aware of what you actually want to share.
