Facebooks terms of use

Since the inception of Facebook, there have been debates about its horrid terms of use. To the point that some have argued that Facebook might be nothing but a government front for collecting large amounts of information on its 150 million strong user base.

There is no doubt that the Facebook's terms of use are worrying stuff for whoever takes the bother to actually read them (loooooong and complicated), which is why I pay a lot of attention to what I share here. For a start I will never fill in any of these surveys or IQ tests...that feels like psychological profiling to me...much more info about me than I want an organization with very odd terms of use to have about me. I am probably overly cautious on this, because I was already burnt by Amazon as one their early reviewers. Apparently everything you write on Amazon belongs to Amazon, so my reviews are now posted on all sorts of sites across the world, courtesy of Amazon selling the rights of my writing to third party sites. I don’t care much for my reviews, so I am not that bothered about them being out there (although I might not have reviewed books about Alien conspiracies if I had know I would be linked to them on multiple sites until then end of my days ;-) hahaha....one lives and learns LoL), but it certainly showed me the potential for abuse and violation of privacy that bad terms of use can entail.

The debate about the Facebook's terms of use is an important one and one that people that use these kinds of open forum online technologies should be aware of. We live in strange times, where the line between private and public is becoming increasingly blurry. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I don’t know. It just the way we are evolving. And precisely because this is so, we need to be increasingly aware of the information that we entrust to companies like Facebook, Google, YouTube (which is still Google btw), MySpace (which is owned not by our sweet friend Tom but by Newscorps, same people that own Fox News with CEO Rupert Murdoch), and more.

So...read Facebook's terms of use and /or chime into the debate...Be aware that although Facebook has posted a very friendly sounding "bill of rights" on the debate page and one they claim they adhere to, the legally binding terms are the ones in the legal terms of use document, the ones you have already agreed to when clicking accept when you signed into this site. And the ones you accept every time you use an application. And these terms of use are not very friendly at all. Pretty much they state that they own everything that you write and post and have the rights to give it or sell it to whoever they like without asking you, without you even knowing about it and without recourse in case of a dispute.

While this may not seem like such a big deal if you a posting family pictures, it is a big deal when you are posting detailed information about yourself ( contact info, where you work, your phone number, your emai, who your mum is, who your best friend is, the details about all the important relationships in your life, etcl), allow access into your brain through psychological testing, telling everybody about what you like to read, therefore giving information about your political and cultural leanings, etc.

At a time in which governments are progressively eroding our rights and moving into the private lives of ordinary citizens with wiretapping and surveillance, do we really want everything about us in the hands of an organization that can use all that info without any safeguards or controls? These are important questions to ask and important issues to be aware of during these changing times....

So I find it very reassuring that many people are now starting to ask themselves these questions here on Facebook. See below for the current discussion of Facebook's terms of use that is going on at these links and chime in if you have something to say

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=69048030774#/wall.php?id=69048030774

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=69048030774#

http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?blog_id=company