Facebook Community Bashes Facebook—While Using a Facebook Group Set Up by Facebook
Over the past few days, members of the Facebook community, which has 175 million total users, have been outraged about changes the Facebook team snuck into the privacy policy. Members of the online community interpreted these policy changes to mean that Facebook now had the right to use anything anyone uploaded to their servers—including private pictures—for any reason, forever.
This morning, Facebook agreed to pull back the changes, which is a major victory for members of all online communities. Most communities are run with the understanding that users either accept the Ts & Cs or they shouldn’t sign up. But the Facebook community has found a way to harness it’s power—utilizing the Facebook platform as the main form of communication with the world and the company itself.
While watching CNN and eating Cheerios this morning, I saw an interview with Facebook’s Chief Privacy Officer. He said the company wasn’t trying to do anything like what they are accused of, and that the whole thing is a misunderstanding. Still, Facebook has reverted back to its old terms of service, and the CPO said they will consider making future changes based on what community members want.
Facebooks even started a new group called “Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities”. The group description begins:
This group is for people to give input on Facebook’s terms of use. These terms are meant to serve as the governing document for how the service is used by people around the world.
As of 10:15am ET today, the group already has f 33,588 members, and that number rose from 31,000 in less than 15 minutes. The big themes of the posts are that Facebook should notify its members when there are privacy changes, and that people object to the previous changes.
It’ll be interesting to see if the community will actually gain the power to influence future privacy policies. Really fascinating stuff.
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I thought this was an interesting example of the way social media functions even beyond what its technology’s creators ever intended!
Now Facebook has posted a draft of new terms of service and is allowing members to vote and discuss.
See also this article in the NY Times.