I switched my Facebook profile to as much private as possible while still being able to be found and navigated to.
Why? I read this: Top Ten Reasons You Should Quit Facebook
Included in that post were the following supporting documents that also helped me make the decision.
Facebook’s Eroding Privacy Policy: A Timeline
How I got sued by Facebook
Facebook’s New Privacy Changes: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
The article also details that Facebook’s CEO is rumored to have committed some pretty serious ethical missteps involving guessing email passwords. But more importantly Facebook settled with UConnect for $65MM with the underlying cause of the lawsuit being that Mark Zuckerberg stole the original idea for Facebook.
I’m not quitting outright for one reason: I still have a vested monetary interest in a few Facebook pages that I administrate. If it wasn’t for that, I would delete my account.
In the coming days I’ll be posting a series of how-to’s in regards to making your Facebook profile as private as Facebook will let you.
Am I overreacting? I don’t think so. I understand that if I post content that isn’t contained on this blog that I cede control of that content to someone else. What I’m not willing to do is give seemingly unlimited control over to someone for content that is essentially mine.
Facebook’s own Terms of Service states:
Section 2.1:
…you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (“IP License”). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.
Reading that logically tells me that if I post it on Facebook, I no longer solely own it. Facebook now owns it as well. “Shared with others” tells me that someone looks at my profile and sees an image I have posted, suddenly it is “Shared” and I no longer have control over it EVEN if I delete it from view on my profile.
I’m not posting this information to defend my position, I’m trying to make sure that you’ve informed yourself as well.
Next Installment: What information can applications see about YOU and your friends?
