What’s a Facebooker to do?

If you are on popular social-networking site Facebook or the growing-in-popularity community of Twitter, you might have heard some of the uproar over Facebook’s new Terms of Service, which they call Terms of Use.  Continued use of Facebook means you consent to the new terms.  Although the change was made on February 4, I don’t think most of us noticed until Mashable picked up on it.

So what’s the uproar about? Read for yourself, from Facebook:

Licenses

You are solely responsible for the User Content that you Post on or through the Facebook Service. You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof. You represent and warrant that you have all rights and permissions to grant the foregoing licenses.

After fellow Hawaii blogger Tammi Hitchcock (@alohaTammi) wrote and Tweeted her blog entry about the topic, I began to wonder, What should I do? I even shared her blog on Twitter and appended this question, Shall I follow suit? The response came from two separate ends of the spectrum.  Some said this was outrageous and that I should do what Tammi did (delete all her albums, turn off Twitter linking to Facebook updates, etc.).  Others said we were overreacting.  One even shared Mark Zuckerberg’s statement to help alay our concerns; he’s the creator of Facebook.  Unfortunately, for him and for Facebook, I think it was too little, too late.  And his claims of benevolence are undercut by the way that Facebook changed the terms, that is to say, without a prominent banner or disclosure.

I think it all boils down to trust. If this were a government agency that had done something like this, there could very well be Congressional or legislative hearings about this.  But this is Facebook, and they are trying to figure out new territory and new rules as they go.  I don’t think Facebook has bad intentions with this change, so I’ll be leaving all my photos and other content up.  On the other hand, they have given me reason for some concern going forward.  Therefore, I won’t be posting any new content to Facebook.  You know, just in case.

Any way, I think that’s for the better.  After all, I do have a photo blog (http://capsunpoe.blogspot.com), and I should be directing traffic there instead of to my Facebook.  As I’ve admitted to friends and fellow bloggers, I really am driven to blog for the clicks I get on my pages.

Mahalo!

Tagged as: facebook, mark zuckerberg, mashable, social networking, terms of service, terms of use, Twitter, zuckerberg