Facebook’s TOS -who’s really shocked?

So facebook owns my data. What’s the big deal?I have to say I was a bit surprised by the response to Facebook’s new policy (just search twitter for #tosfb to see what I mean).

In an article by Stan Schroeder, he talks about his opinion on the new policy. Yes, I can understand his frustration as they basically own your data now, and did it without allowing people the opportuntiy to remove their data before the change. But my surprise is that he thought this was strange or out of the ordinary. Really? Have you read the TOS on most of the sites you use? Check your insurance, banks and credit cards. They own you too!

The web is not a place to take lightly where you put things. But, as long as you remember that anything you put on the web can be used by anyone at anytime, you can’t really be surprised. For example, I wrote a post about some favorite artists of my Twitter friends. I am a very honest person, so not only did I put the links to their sites, but I gave them full recognition for their work. The problem? I still took their images! Without asking. And put them on my site. What’s stopping someone with a more malicious intent from doing the same thing? And if they use it in a way that damages the image of an up and coming artist that can’t afford to fight it – what is the artist to do? Nada.

We know how amazing the web is – but it is also a dangerous place. You wouldn’t walk through downtown LA, SF or NY at 1am carrying a wad of hundreds and talking on the phone; we all know what the outcome would be. So why would you be that careless online? Don’t put your hundreds on the web for someone to steal, and don’t put information or photos that could cause damage. As long as you only put on the web what you’re not afraid of someone ‘borrowing’, you won’t have any issues. We’ve seen the aftermath of tweets gone awry already; we really shouldn’t be surprised that we have no web privacy. I’m not saying that Facebook shouldn’t have given us warning (because they should have) but I am saying that it isn’t a surprise.

Agree? Disagree? What do you think of FaceBook’s new policy? Do you think about what you put online before you put it there? Feel free to share your thoughts.

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