Beware Facebook's New Terms of Service

I just received the following alert from ASMP regarding Facebook's "new and improved" (AKA insidious and treacherous) user agreement. Of course, it is new and improved - in a way that benefits Facebook but not photographers.

Take a look at the following web page for a cut to the chase type discussion on Facebook's user agreement: http://asmp.org/fb-tos#.Uioq-caThWk

This is the email I received:

The new Facebook Terms of Use have been modified to allow the company to sell virtually anything that is uploaded to the service, including all your photos, your identity and your data. Facebook has also explicitly removed the privacy protection from the commercialization rights.

This means that any photos uploaded to Facebook may be sold, distributed or otherwise commercialized with no compensation to the photographer. These new terms of service go into effect today [9-6-2013].

If you wish to provide feedback to the company, you can contact them at
https://www.facebook.com/notes/faceb...53167395945301
ASMP will continue to work to modify the terms of use to be more favorable
to photographers.

Here's the most important language:

"You give us permission to use your name, and profile picture, content, and information in connection with commercial, sponsored, or related content (such as a brand you like) served or enhanced by us. This means, for example, that you permit a business or other entity to pay us to display your name and/or profile picture with your content or information, without any compensation to you. If you have selected a specific audience for your content or information, we will respect your choice when we use it."

Visit http://asmp.org/fb-tos#.Uioq-caThWk for a Q&A on this subject.

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Moral of the story: If you post your photographs on Facebook, expect them to be distributed, marketed, sold and exploited in a manner that brings maximum revenue to Facebook - and no revenue to you.

I hate to say it, but: duh. Facebook gives zero damn about you or any of it's members. You're a product.

clayne said:

I hate to say it, but: duh. Facebook gives zero damn about you or any of it's members. You're a product.

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Ayup. Can't remember who wrote the essay on this (a lot of people have made the point), but if you are not paying a service fee to the company, then you are the product...

FB is simply selling its social graph to advertisers as an alternative to Google's approach to indexing the internet. Rather than a top-down approach, they provide a context-sensitive, filtered indexing of the web. I'm sure I'm not telling anyone anything that they don't already know.

Wonder if the new terms also cover distribution by the NSA to other governments around the world?

Ken

Heh, regardless of what they say in public, I absolutely guarantee you the NSA has a full fed pipe direct from Facebook.

Do NOT trust these companies AT ALL.

Saw this from the beginning and never signed up for a Facebook account. People look at me in a weird way when I tell them I don't have one, but they definitely go "hmmmmm" when I tell them why. I believe the term is sheeple. I prefer not to give some entity something of myself without real compensation. Do you really want anyone knowing everything about you?

I believe there is a real market for a private Facebook. Most people pay more than $80 bucks for their phone. Why not a couple bucks a month for something like Facebook that will not sell you out to the highest bidder? Until that happens, email on a private server that you control (i.e. not gmail) is the way to go.

Well, when I Google myself, FB doesn't come up, not do my blogs or website. But my posts on APUG sometimes show up.

Depending on privacy settings, what's on Facebook is hidden from search engines. It is its own servant and master, not Google's.

I was on Facebook back when you needed an .edu email to sign-up. I stopped using Facebook earlier than most as well - I saw the privacy issues coming.
Facebook would periodically add "new" features that were nothing more than a split of an existing single feature. In doing so, privacy settings were reset to the lowest privacy. I grew weary of having to reset my privacy settings so often.

At that point I started to leave. I still have my account, but rarely use it. I removed all my photos, and deleted most posts (and found deleting them only hides them - you have to go a step further to actually "delete," and that isn't a true delete either).

clayne said:

Heh, regardless of what they say in public, I absolutely guarantee you the NSA has a full fed pipe direct from Facebook.

Do NOT trust these companies AT ALL.

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Well I sure as hell dont trust the NSA, also known as No Such Agency to those on the inside.

Patrick Robert James said:

Saw this from the beginning and never signed up for a Facebook account. People look at me in a weird way when I tell them I don't have one, but they definitely go "hmmmmm" when I tell them why. I believe the term is sheeple. I prefer not to give some entity something of myself without real compensation. Do you really want anyone knowing everything about you?

I believe there is a real market for a private Facebook. Most people pay more than $80 bucks for their phone. Why not a couple bucks a month for something like Facebook that will not sell you out to the highest bidder? Until that happens, email on a private server that you control (i.e. not gmail) is the way to go.

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Correct. There are also droolers and knuckledraggers.

With the quality of images that I see on people's facebook pages (when I look over the shoulder of people who do have a facebook account) I really wonder what commercial interests facebook could possibly have with such a pile of garbage ...

Poisson Du Jour said:

Depending on privacy settings, what's on Facebook is hidden from search engines. It is its own servant and master, not Google's.

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i hope they have that working now ..
one of the reasons i left facebook 3 +/- years ago
was that the site would auto-reset my privacy settings
to index everything i say and do to google, and let everyone see everything
( so i had no privacy whatsoever ) ...

Truzi said:

I was on Facebook back when you needed an .edu email to sign-up. I stopped using Facebook earlier than most as well - I saw the privacy issues coming.
Facebook would periodically add "new" features that were nothing more than a split of an existing single feature. In doing so, privacy settings were reset to the lowest privacy. I grew weary of having to reset my privacy settings so often.

At that point I started to leave. I still have my account, but rarely use it. I removed all my photos, and deleted most posts (and found deleting them only hides them - you have to go a step further to actually "delete," and that isn't a true delete either).

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... exactly ...
i went back because a gallery i had my work at suggested i have a "fan page"
or whatever it is called, so i did that ( didn't work ) and had to get a personal page
in order to do that, so i did that too ... but 3 personalpages, and 3 fan pages appeared ... all woven together ...
and my 3year old list of "friends" or whatever they were called appeared too ..
it took me about 30seconds, but i did the "hard delete" ( not really) of 1 page, and all 6 vanished ...
it is funny though ( in a pathetic kind of way ) when you delete / remove your account they send you
emails saying " your friend so and so really misses you, don't you miss him/her" about 4 times a day for a few weeks.

Whoever is surprised by Facebook's privacy policies needs to do a reality check. Facebook does not exist to make you happy or to allow you to reach out to potential customers. It is a business, and you are nothing more than a pawn for them to accomplish their goals. They're a publicly traded company for crying out loud. Their commitments rank like this: 1. Stockholder. 2. Themselves. 3. Employees. 4. Sponsors and creditors. 5. The environment they exist in.... etc etc ad nauseum. Last on the list: you.

Make no mistake about it, they are there to make money off of your membership.

Sure there are some benefits. For me it's about keeping in touch with friends that are so far away I cannot visit them in person, or reaching many people with a similar interest. That is a benefit to me.
It's up to each and every one of us to figure out whether it's worth it or not.

Thomas Bertilsson said:

Whoever is surprised by Facebook's privacy policies needs to do a reality check. (snip)

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And that's putting it mildly +100.

In my opinion, anybody who is still on facebook, especially in light of recent events not withstanding the OP, is simply an idiot. The nuances beyond that hold little interest for me.

Recently retired after the last 20 yrs as computer programmer, mostly on internet-related products. I was initially excited about the internet, but its another "free service" in which others (gov't & business) are "collecting" on that service.
Requested deletion of my Facebook account, and hope to spend more time away from the computer.

jnanian said:

... ...
it is funny though ( in a pathetic kind of way ) when you delete / remove your account they send you
emails saying " your friend so and so really misses you, don't you miss him/her" about 4 times a day for a few weeks.

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Reminds me of an excellent and very funny book I read in the 60s which if I recall correctly was two stories in one book. It was called ""Miss Lonely Hearts and A Cool Million" in which the innocent teenager keeps getting reminders from his "friend" who sells body-building equipment that the friend is bitterly disappointed that he hasn't bought the equipment and keeps giving the teenager one last chance to do at ever reducing prices but is getting more annoyed each time he makes the next offer without response

Anyone else recall the book. I am sure it was written by a U.S. author. Worth seeking out if you have the chance

pentaxuser

It's self explanatory that Facebook doesn't "own" media which is uploaded to that service and they certainly cannot sell it.

Why?

Because ANYONE can upload ANYTHING to facebook (and they do!).
If I copy all the photos from APUG and upload them to my Facebook-account, then, according to you guys and that link, Facebook can make money of YOUR work even though you are in no way affiliated with the site or have given your premission for it?

Give me a break....

But hey, let them do it, if that (not likely) is the case, after a while, we can all form a mass-sue action against them and earn trillions because of copyright infringements.

Then we can form another court case, where all the other nations around the world ALSO start suing Facebook for breaking copyright laws in an international scale.

Facebook, at least at the last cross-road, wanted to have their backs free, so behind that change, lay a need to specify that they can copy material, for the purpose of backups and clustering.

They DO sell the information ABOUT the users, indeed, Facebook-users are all a part of "The product", but media, video, sound, photos, are just about always copied from other sources. Besides, they are protected by intellectual property laws in just about any civilized country.

And what is the legal status of changing the terms of usage as they feel like anyway? The usage terms you agree to when you sign up, is suddenly replaced by "we were only kidding, these are the new rules"
??

Imagine what would happen if youtube suddenly said that all the material on there was their property and that they could sell it as they saw fit...not very likely.

There is a reason that I don't have a Facebook account, or any account except apug for that matter.
I read all the pages of the TOC. Would anyone in their right mind "accept and agree to be bound by the terms and provisions of the TOS // which may be updated by us from time to time without notice to you"?

Erosion of one's illusion of privacy while communicating in public.????? Illusion of maintaining property rights when displaying in a pubic forum.???? Central Banks and quality easing of the value of the currency you use..... Upsetting that the Merchant class has so much money they don't really care about your business. Solution.. Vote with your money. Buy from he/she whom supports your value system. And when given the opportunity.. provide a bit of sand for the lubricant of the big machine.

Thanks for the information.

A good read by Dead Link Removed on the contemporary culture of twitter, facebook, etc..

I do not have a problem with these new service terms since I do not use Facebook nor any other time wasting social media. If I want to interact with someone I know, I get off my butt and go see them.

Sirius Glass said:

I do not have a problem with these new service terms since I do not use Facebook nor any other time wasting social media. If I want to interact with someone I know, I get off my butt and go see them.

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That's easy when you don't live halfway around the world from most family and a big portion of your friends.

Perhaps globalization has to do with the popularity of social networks?