HN Explorer

Facebook reverts Terms of Use (facebook.com)

29 points by dill_day ↗ HN
A couple of weeks ago, we posted an update to our Terms of Use that we hoped would clarify some parts of it for our users. Over the past couple of days, we have received a lot of questions and comments about these updated terms and what they mean for people and their information. Because of the feedback we received, we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.

27 comments

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 74.7 ms ] thread
dill_day
A couple of weeks ago, we posted an update to our Terms of Use that we hoped would clarify some parts of it for our users. Over the past couple of days, we have received a lot of questions and comments about these updated terms and what they mean for people and their information. Because of the feedback we received, we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.
herval
I like how they said they'll rewrite 'in a language everybody can understand' - and then will probably rewrite changing the meaning of it, not just making it 'noob-friendly' (e.g. removing the offensive bits).
bjclark
I guess people did care. I thought it would only be alpha geeks, and people would whine for a few weeks, and then we'd all go back to playing scrabble.
rksprst
Facebook was pretty quick to respond and revert the changes. I think if they had waited for a few weeks most users would have forgotten about it. I doubt any significant percentage of users changed their facebook usage habits because of this issue.
alecco
It got to major newspapers and even some TV. One Facebook protest group made over 70k members in one day.

Facebook can lose the grace of the masses in a matter of months. There are many websites ready to fill in.

tokenadult
Facebook can lose the grace of the masses in a matter of months.

Or even in weeks. That's the crucial issue. It's easy to bail out of websites and go elsewhere. The user experience has to be friendly, or a competitor has an easy grab on market share.

Now whether Facebook or anyone else can really monetize a social networking site is another question. "The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent," so maybe Facebook will go broke before its customers bail out. But in any case, the customers can bail out if they don't like the overall experience.

greggraham
Ah, the power of social networking.
mattj
The whole bill of rights thing seems a little bit unbelievable - until they have a viable long-term business model, there is absolutely no guarantee that any of this couldn't change. They're not going to lock themselves in to their current relationships with their users - especially if they want to keep innovating (which seems to be facebook's mantra right now).

It's great they reverted the change, but I really doubt this will last for long.

feverishaaron
I wonder how much of this is really a tempest in a teapot. I don't think my "Aaron is making awesome coffee" status update is really valuable enough intellectual property to be concerned about. I understand the "big brother" aspect miffing a few folks, but in our litigious society, I can't blame FB for covering their butts.
ntoshev
It's interesting to compare this to the "google is reading my email!" reaction they got for showing ads in gmail. People get easily upset on stupid stuff like this, but it doesn't mean the company should ignore it.
herval
problem is most people think their family photos and 'OMFG awesome coffee' status updates are their creative, personal and marketable 'intelectual property'. well, ok - the family photos ARE personal...
omnivore
FB needed to cover themselves, but the outcry was much ado about nothing. But meanwhile, the whiners will think they won.
jacquesm
So, on a scale of 0...10 I think facebook just scored a '9' in customer relations.

I'm really impressed, I would have expected worse.

pclark
you expected worse? How can you give them 9 when they just changed their TOS and only reverted it when people kicked up a fuss
jacquesm
Because:

1) I did not expect them to respond at all

2) I did not expect them to revert to their previous terms

3) I like it how they communicated that, not too much 'doublespeak' in there

None of these were on my list of 'expected actions', I fully expected them to stonewall and ride out the media storm. I think that their about-face is possibly reflective of the number of cancellations they've seen more than from anything else, but I doubt we'll ever get confirmation of that.

pclark
you're right -- but they dont deserve credit for reversing it -- they deserve maybe to be slated a little less.
jacquesm
Hehe, ok, I see your point. But from what I'm used to when it comes to bigcorp communicating with Joe User this is a pretty good example of how it is done.

Their initial action was a bad one, but their handling of the fall-out is pretty good, I see it as a net win for them, they're all over the news and they are shown to be on top of the situation.

jonknee
They should try and pull dick moves like this all the time. If they get caught they can score a 9 in customer relations by retreating. If they don't get caught they got away with something. Can't fail!
jacquesm
once = mistake

multiple times = very bad strategy. I recall AOL releasing a lot of customer data and not getting too much flak because of how they handled it, I think facebook is walking on thin ice for a while when it comes to how they deal with their users information.

jonknee
Facebook has had a lot more than one privacy controversy. Remember Beacon? They retreated then too after a similar protest.
josefresco
The phrase that pays: "We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to change, modify, add, or delete portions of these Terms of Use at any time without further notice"

Nothing to see here, move along.

trickjarrett
From Zuck's response, I understand what they were saying. Their legal department said, "Look, if users quit you have to delete their content too. Unless you change the TOS." So they changed the TOS to allow the messages and shared photos, etc to remain.

The problem arose because it's a major change with no introduction or explanation, and the TOS had no language to qualify it as such so they were giving themselves carte blanch in terms of limitations on this power.

What they need to do: 1) Carefully construct the legal text to not appear so far reaching and easy to abuse. 2) Warn everyone that change is coming. 3) Implement said change and monitor feedback.

jasonlbaptiste
I think this was a really poor move on Facebook's part. TOS are often worded and seem a lot worse than they are. By putting this supposed screw up in front of all 175 million members, they really made the issue a lot bigger. Before that, most people who cared were Alpha Geeks and privacy nuts that like to whine about any issue.

If they ACTUALLY sold your data after you left, that might cause a huge uproar. I don't think they would be dumb enough to do that. Also, how valuable is the data of a user that isnt even there anymore. Yup, I can see advertisers really seeing value in selling a product to a user that doesn't exist anymore. Most likely, the real reason for keeping some of that data, is to keep it as part of the overall data they can mine / use algorithim's with.

Drafting a bill of rights seems like a good move. If anything they should have used this opportunity as a chance to talk with everyone, gather some valuable feedback, and then change the terms of use. Jumping the gun and reverting back just doesn't make sense. Imagine if they did this with the Newsfeed back in 06.

Hovertruck
I was expecting this to happen. It's pretty much a repeat of what happened when Google released Chrome.