About Face

“Facebook will revise a new terms of service agreement that had raised privacy concerns for users and trademark worries for colleges, the company announced early Wednesday. After a barrage of complaints, Facebook scrapped a new agreement that had granted the company indefinite rights to material posted by users. The company will restore the language of its prior agreement, which states that Facebook will lose any rights to posted material if users discontinue their accounts. The agreement, first highlighted by the Consumerist Web site, raised potential concerns for colleges that often use trademarked logos to market themselves on Facebook …” (more)

[Jack Stripling, Inside Higher Ed, 18 February]

Comments

  • The irony is that going back to the old ToS now leaves Facebook in breach of it, as they have been for some time, since they do not remove user content upon ‘deactivation’.
    I had previously thought a defect in their architecture was was they were concealing but looking at the legal wording they used to ‘let users continue to see another user’s data after they’ve gone’, it’s clear that was in progress here was an attempted coup de monde on user-licensing.

    Fail!

Leave a Reply