Facebook: still trying to snow users
p2pnet news view Advertising | P2P:- “… like you really thought that if someone posted a Nike swoosh symbol that you could own it??
“Think again. I know that the facebook team is saying what they need to say probably after having a frightening meeting with their lawyers. You have put your behind on the line now and everyone knows what your intentions are. You mess up one time, your’e out. You sell one persons personal artwork. You’re done. That person owns their own. That’s why their name is own it.
“This message is just one to try to calm us down so you don’t have lawsuits up the ying yang! I want to see Facebook give a press release or press conference on CNN announcing publicly what you are doing. That way you have no way out of it.
“Facebook wouldn’t exist without it’s users. Your ads wouldn’t be clicked on without your users. Shady business will always bite you on your ass. Let’s ’see’ if you keep your end of the deal??
“Remember in no time there will be yet another bigger and better social network taking over the net.”
That’s Bree in response to advertising company Facebook’s embarrassingly blatant effort to sneak modified Terms of Service past the people who keep it in business.
It figured it owned user data before, during and after.
Wrong, said the people who do own them.
‘I’ve been excited …’
In pure, unadulterated PR-babble, “Last week, we returned to our previous Terms of Use as we worked on a new set of governing documents that would more clearly explain the relationship between Facebook and its users,” says chief advertising exec Mark Zuckerman, failing to point out he had zero choice in the matter.
Since then, “I’ve been excited to see how much people care about Facebook and how willing they are to contribute to the process of governing the site.”
Excited? Angered, would be more like it. And of course, the absolute last thing he wants is for anyone other than him and his team to have any say whatsoever in how Facebook is operated, what is does, or how it does it.
“Our main goal at Facebook is to help make the world more open and transparent,” he says which, translated, reads, “Our main goal at Facebook is to make users believe we’re open and transparent so we can secretly get on with our main business of selling their data to make as rich.”
Zuckerberg also says with a straigt face, “We believe that if we want to lead the world in this direction, then we must set an example by running our service in this way.”
What a nauseating load of old cobblers!
“We sat down to work on documents that could be the foundation of this and we came to an interesting realization – that the conventional business practices around a Terms of Use document are just too restrictive to achieve these goals,” he states without blushing. “We decided we needed to do things differently and so we’re going to develop new policies that will govern our system from the ground up in an open and transparent way.”
He and his folks didn’t decide anything. They were forced, kicking and screaming, to back-track.
He goes on, “we are giving you a greater opportunity to voice your opinion over how Facebook is governed” (Gee, thanks) and »»»
We’re starting this off by publishing two new documents for your review and comment. The first is the Facebook Principles, which defines your rights and will serve as the guiding framework behind any policy we’ll considerâor the reason we won’t consider others. The second document is the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, which will replace the existing Terms of Use. With both documents, we tried hard to simplify the language so you have a clear understanding of how Facebook will be run. We’ve created separate groups for each document so you can read them and provide comments and feedback. You can find the Facebook Principles here and the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities here. Before these new proposals go into effect, you’ll also have the ability to vote for or against proposed changes.
He also states »»»
This can mean that our users periodically experience adjustments to new products as they become familiar with them, and before becoming enthusiastic supporters.
No! Really! We’re not making it up!
Posts Elizabeth »»»
Mark, I find the language in this piece deceptive, and legally “open to interpretation”. If there are changes to be made, please confirm, that in the spirit of fairness the following will apply to all Facebook users without exception:
a) A transparent & public vote – with a range of independent observers – and an oppurtunity for Facebook users to somehow vet the independence of these observers.
b) An amnesty for all Facebook users who do not agree with the proposed changes, or the underlying reasons for change, to be FULLY deleted from all records, and measures contractually put in place to actively dissuade the company from even TRYING to break this agreement.
c) An admission that as a company, Facebook does not operate under the same system as any ‘fairly governed’ historical system – since we all know that the generation of profit is key in making these changes.A very dissappointed & suspicious,
Liz
Stay tuned as Markie and the guys continue to try to bamboozle their users.
owned user data – Facebook `Terms of Service` storm, February 17, 2009
and after – Facebook lays claim to dead man`s page, February 21, 2009
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February 27th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
Cynical/Paranoid much? Sheesh.
February 27th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
She’s not the only one cynical or paranoid in these days of datamining and legal government spying.
I would mention this is not the first time Facebook has tried to make hay off their users. I call to point the Beacon app that followed you everywhere you went on the net, reporting back to Facebook that data. Not only that but a database was setup for what you bought on line and others could view that data. How much value do you think advertisers were getting out of that? Notice they didn’t want to pay you for your data. Notice that they really didn’t even want to mention all of what Beacon did.
Only after one girlfriend found out what her boyfriend had bought her, before he had the time to get it to her, did the breach of your privacy really hit home. But what if it was medical data you paid a service on. Are you comfortable that some insurance company didn’t have their nose in your data for that? Or if that doesn’t apply, how about this little item. Since the days of the Patriot act, you can no longer buy home chemistry sets for kids to experiment at home with learning science. What you can buy is so limited in what they can do as to be worthless as far as learning real science by doing experiments. So if you attempt to buy something like this or even search for it, as an idea of what you might buy your kid, don’t be surprised if one day you get a knock on the door from Homeland Security.
If those are too far fetched for you, then how about kids being put on suspension for what their Facebook pages have on them relating to their school. Several incidents have already been to court over just such happenstances.
Don’t think for a moment in today’s connectivity of the internet, no one is interested in your data or that it could not have real life effects to you.
Given all that, you trust these owners of Facebook to be really interested in your welfare and not in the money your data could bring them, regardless of what that might do to you in your personal, real life?
I will not go to Facebook, knowing what they think of their members. I simply don’t want them to have my data for any reason. They’ve in the past already shown their idea of what constitutes privacy is far different than what you would think of as important in personal data to be held private.
February 27th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Not only that, Facebook recently held a meeting on the OpenId standard and refused to open it up to the technical community. “We believe in open standards, as long as we get to decide how they work?”
Hey, this is a capitalist society, let’s not be surprised when business people behave like capitalists …
February 28th, 2009 at 2:09 am
I’ve pretty much just left my FB account as a marker to friends / family. Reasons:
* FB won’t allow RFC compliant email addresses that would allow me to track their spam. So using the address+Facebook@gmail.com trick that I use to track other services and see if they sell my address won’t work with FB. To them it’s an ‘illegal address’.. now why is that?
* FB with apps turns into a meaningless clutter of burps and farts. Without apps, Facebook = Twitter. So just go to Twitter already, bearing in mind that they may become like FB one day… *sigh*
If you want to look at it another way, you can call FB & MySpace’s model ‘push $pam’, because unlike email you opted into it. Oh, and you invited your friends too.
* FB [, etal] has never gotten anyone ‘hired’ or ‘noticed’ in a good way. You can read all the stories about how folks get noticed in a ‘bad way’ every day. Students suspended, workers reprimanded, people stalked, etc. What you *should do* is get a Facebook account, friend everyone you know, and point them at LinkedIn or email. No pictures, no phone numbers. If you value your privacy.
* Apple has blocked Facebook at some of their stores. From a business view this makes sense. Not only are you sucking their network and not generating revenue for them, but it’s a potential privacy liability to them as well. Now apply this to yourself and the amount of time you spend on FB or MyS.
* Facebook was never interested in ‘user welfare’ any more than MySpace was or any other SNS.
Users are nothing more than a commodity, just eyeballs and impressions, revenue measurements to the *real* customers, the advertisers. When the advertisers cut their income streams to FB then you see ‘creativity’ like Beacon and this change of TOS and abrupt change back.
April 19th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
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