Has Facebook really backed down in privacy row?

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 18 Feb 2009 at 08:53

Facebook has scrapped controversial amendments to its terms of service - but it's not clear whether user privacy is any better off as a result.

The social-networking site provoked an almighty privacy row after it amended its terms of service to grant Facebook a perpetual right to users' content - even after they had cancelled their account.

In a blog post made on Monday, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said the amendments were necessary to keep the site functioning normally. "One of the questions about our new terms of use is whether Facebook can use this information forever," he wrote.

"When a person shares something like a message with a friend, two copies of that information are created - one in the person's sent messages box and the other in their friend's inbox.

"Even if the person deactivates their account, their friend still has a copy of that message. We think this is the right way for Facebook to work, and it is consistent with how other services like email work. One of the reasons we updated our terms was to make this more clear."

Last night, however, Zuckerberg issued another blog post, claiming the company is reverting back to its previous terms and conditions, which omits the controversial clause.

"We concluded that returning to our previous terms was the right thing for now," he said. "As I said yesterday, we think that a lot of the language in our terms is overly formal and protective so we don't plan to leave it there for long."

It's not clear, however, whether Facebook will now behave any differently to reflect its amended terms of service. Will emails or pictures sent from terminated accounts now be deleted from the inbox of recipients? Zuckerberg doesn't say, but PC Pro's online editor, Barry Collins, still has an email in his inbox this morning from a person who deleted their Facebook account at the beginning of February.

Facebook was unavailable for comment at the time of publication.

New "Bill of Rights"

Zuckerberg says the site will now work on a revised set of terms and conditions - a document he's rather grandly referring to as the Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities.

"Our next version will be a substantial revision from where we are now," he says. "It will reflect the principles I described yesterday around how people share and control their information, and it will be written clearly in language everyone can understand."

Given that Facebook now has 175 million members across the world ("if it were a country, it would be the sixth most populated country in the world," Zuckerberg claims), developing a set of terms and conditions that anyone can understand will be no mean undertaking.

The company is urging users to help it create the new terms on the Facebook Bill of Rights page.