Having trouble understanding Facebook’s terms of service? Perhaps a translation into “bro speak” will help.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday morning Facebook announced changes to their Site Governance documents which as a number of people pointed out removed the ability of users to profit from their status updates. More specifically Facebook states that “you will not use your personal profile for your own commercial gain”. While I’m assuming that this is supposed to be straight forward about selling things through your Facebook profile, part of me wonders why Facebook needed to make this explicit statement.
Read the rest of this entry »

Over the weekend Consumerist published an article describing Facebook’s updated Terms of Service. Now users are up in arms over the updated terms. The angry users which includes some of Facebook’s biggest evangelists, claim that Facebook is in the wrong after developing a more aggressive terms. A search for “Facebook terms” on Twitter turns up a ton of tweets from angry users. The statement which is causing some controversy is as follows:

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 has essentially changed their terms so they now own your content indefinitely. So what does this mean for the average user? Probably very little. Mark Zuckerberg has clarified why they updated the terms on the Facebook Blog:
Read the rest of this entry »