Facebook abandoned several changes to its privacy policy in the face of a backlash from privacy groups concerned it could take too many liberties with a member’s personal data.
A substantial revision to the policy in coming, says Mark Zuckerberg
The social networking site reverted to its old terms of use late Tuesday, promising a “substantial revision” to the policy sometime in the future “written clearly in language everyone can understand,” according to a blog post by founder Mark Zuckerberg.
“More than 175 million people use Facebook,” Zuckerberg said. “Our terms aren’t just a document that protect our rights; it’s the governing document for how the service is used by everyone across the world. Given its importance, we need to make sure the terms reflect the principles and values of the people using the service.”
Two weeks ago, Facebook had changed the terms of service guidelines giving it the right to use personal data in the way it wanted, even if a user removed it. This included after a member terminated his or her Facebook account.
In response, the Electronic Privacy Information Center had threatened legal action and consumer-rights blogs were in full lather.
The terms are now back to the way they were: “You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content. Facebook does not assert any ownership over your User Content; rather…you retain full ownership of all of your User Content…”
the fact that Facebook change their TOS back so quickly is an indication that they knew they were wrong in the first place