After unleashing a firestorm of anger from the blogging community about Facebook’s quiet attempt to change its Terms of Service that retroactively makes them the owner of all the photos, videos and other personal content you upload to the social networking site, the company has done an about face.
From blog.facebook.com:
Going forward, we’ve decided to take a new approach towards developing our terms. We concluded that returning to our previous terms was the right thing for now.
Creator Mark Zuckerberg promises the next version will be a complete rewrite, and in plain English to “clarify” the terms of service.
In the meantime, Zuckerberg has created a new group titled Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities for his 175,000,000,000 members to provide their input on what that “Bill” should contain.
This is brilliant, if as nothing more than a PR move. But the reality is, “democratizing” a website is a really, really bad idea. I’ve got lots of experience in this area to justify my opinion: as the SysOp (aka “Administrator”) for five separate online communities back before the Internet was a household term (ie 1987), I participated in and managed such digital democracies. They don’t work. First, the crazies come out of the woodwork. The signal-to-noise ratio plummets, and those that truly care about shaping a “bill of rights” get squelched and ultimately go back to “lurking” as part of the silent majority. Some outright leave the online community. This is a prime example:
Here Come the Crazies
See? The Request from Facebook for feedback has 14 posts by 12 people. Breastfeeding is not obscene has 2,227 by 176 members.
And once that digital democracy ball gets rolling, heaven help the administrators who have to make tough decisions about things like canceling accounts, adding features to the site, or appeasing advertisers. Every single move is suddenly open for debate, and nothing gets done.
Here’s my high-priced advice to Facebook: Write a TOS that doesn’t make your users’ content your own, and leave it at that. Zuckerberg should have come to me sooner — he’s already opened the pandora’s box.
Source: Update on Terms, blog.facebook.com
See previous article: Facebook how owns your content, HAINSWORTH.COM
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Facebook’s About Face, and why Digital Democracy Stinks
After unleashing a firestorm of anger from the blogging community about Facebook’s quiet attempt to change its Terms of Service that retroactively makes them the owner of all the photos, videos and other personal content you upload to the social networking site, the company has done an about face.
From blog.facebook.com:
Going forward, we’ve decided to take a new approach towards developing our terms. We concluded that returning to our previous terms was the right thing for now.
Creator Mark Zuckerberg promises the next version will be a complete rewrite, and in plain English to “clarify” the terms of service.
In the meantime, Zuckerberg has created a new group titled Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities for his 175,000,000,000 members to provide their input on what that “Bill” should contain.
This is brilliant, if as nothing more than a PR move. But the reality is, “democratizing” a website is a really, really bad idea. I’ve got lots of experience in this area to justify my opinion: as the SysOp (aka “Administrator”) for five separate online communities back before the Internet was a household term (ie 1987), I participated in and managed such digital democracies. They don’t work. First, the crazies come out of the woodwork. The signal-to-noise ratio plummets, and those that truly care about shaping a “bill of rights” get squelched and ultimately go back to “lurking” as part of the silent majority. Some outright leave the online community. This is a prime example:
Here Come the Crazies
See? The Request from Facebook for feedback has 14 posts by 12 people. Breastfeeding is not obscene has 2,227 by 176 members.
And once that digital democracy ball gets rolling, heaven help the administrators who have to make tough decisions about things like canceling accounts, adding features to the site, or appeasing advertisers. Every single move is suddenly open for debate, and nothing gets done.
Here’s my high-priced advice to Facebook: Write a TOS that doesn’t make your users’ content your own, and leave it at that. Zuckerberg should have come to me sooner — he’s already opened the pandora’s box.
Source: Update on Terms, blog.facebook.com
See previous article: Facebook how owns your content, HAINSWORTH.COM
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See what else Michael has written about on the topics of Facebook, social networking, SysOp, System Operator, Terms of Service, TOS.
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