Who Do You Trust?
Every single day people, arguable most, blindly accept companies’ TOS (“terms of service”). They unresistingly click “I Agree” to whatever legal jargon is in between them and their desired product or service. Why? People trust the companies have their best interest in mind. They trust, for example, that the photos they post to Facebook are not thrown up on a billboard on I-5, or a silly comment they made on a friend’s wall will live on for eternity.
It comes down to people believing Mark Zuckerberg when he says, “We wouldn’t share your information in a way you wouldn’t want. The trust you place in us as a safe place to share information is the most important part of what makes Facebook work.”
However, in light of Facebook’s recent attempt to discreetly change their TOS without user buy in, Zuckerberg’s words resonate as mere pleasantries. Why did Facebook quietly, and in turn deceptively, try to change their TOS? Why didn’t they build on their trust with users by openly (possibly collaboratively) re-working their original content license? Why weren’t users asked to re-sign off on the terms? What about a mass notification? Facebook sure didn’t have a difficult time sending one when they reverted back to their original TOS.
I understand that TOS on the internet, especially those set out by social networking sites, will continually evolve. It is just a matter of how they evolve. Just as an article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution underscores, “The issue of who controls the data posted to the site is a massive gray area that continues to evolve as Internet companies and consumers shape social norms of how to define trust in the digital age and share their lives through new technology.”
That being said, I believe that until we have settled on an industry standard, agreeing to a company’s TOS has to be done with a degree of trust and knowledge that you are giving up quite a bit of power and ownership to the website operator.
Further Reading:
Facebook’s Users Ask Who Owns Information
Facebook’s terms-of-service change has users abuzz
The Facebook Terms of Use Debate—We Care Because It’s Social
Facebook TOS
Facebook’s New Terms Of Service: “We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever.”
Facebook Clarifies Terms Of Service: “We Do Not Own Your Stuff Forever”
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7 Comments, Comment or Ping
Alvin Singh
Many of us who use social networking websites have to be very careful of how we communicate with family or friends. As an entrepreneur I look at social networking as a form of marketing and promoting. Every now and then I will add something to humanize the “friendship” or “following” so that people are not over saturated with commercialism. At the same time I now that millions of people use them to actually “socialize”, the issue is if you leave the website(party) when you are done socializing you are leaving for a reason.
Since Facebook is the most popular website in social networking they have to re examine their promises or take the chance of losing millions of users who will not post any more photos or use any of the applications. Seems like Mark Zuckerberg has a tough challenge ahead or someone will create a site that will counter all the issues that Facebook has and create a new networking buzz.
Feb 20th, 2009
jaysh
What was most alarming to me about the change in TOS was how quietly it was done. Zuckerberg keeps talking about how he wants the platform to become a user’s primary digital identity.
Facebook has reached critical mass to actually help solve the identity problem on the internet. On the other hand, if the user cannot trust their identity provider, then the whole paradigm cannot hold up. Zuckerberg has simply given us a taste of the dangers a closed system like Facebook to a vision of an open web. The questions now is how do we keep FB honest and how do we hold them accountable.
I am an avid FB user and a young software engineer myself, but the change of TOS without notification to the users had me wondering if Zuckerberg is simply too inexperienced to understand the impact of this decision on his userbase. It also made it clear that we must start supporting other 2.0 identity initiative before FB creates a monopoly on identity.
Feb 20th, 2009
Margery Nabors
Jay, I agree. FB’s lack of transparency really eroded user trust!
This mishap serves as a wake-up call for people to pay closer attention to the TOS to which they agree, as well as the possible need for them to support another online identity initiative.
Feb 21st, 2009
hrhmedia
I agree. Companies such as Facebook need to be very careful not to abuse their trust. This has become a huge issue, especially during the economic downturn when Americans are incredibly wary of institutions they once trusted. It doesn’t take much to drive people away.
Feb 22nd, 2009
ivsyd
Well, this case has clearly illustrated one more problem. People blindly agree with all the offered TOS because they don’t want to read 2-4 pages of a legal copy as they usually want to start using a service as soon as possible, without any delays. Doing so might be equal to giving away the content these users create.
Here is the extract of TOS of one of the online services I signed up for a week ago:
“By posting Contributions on the Website, you agree to and hereby do grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, *******, its contractors, and the users of the Website a non-exclusive, irrevocable, perpetual, royalty-free, fully sublicensable, fully paid up, worldwide license to use, copy, publicly perform, digitally perform, publicly display, and distribute such Contributions and to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such Contributions.”
Would I sign up for this one after reading this paragraph? Probably not…
Feb 22nd, 2009
Brook Ellingwood
I mentioned this elsewhere, but getting lawyers to let you have Terms of Service that actually reflect your values is pretty much impossible, even when you’re Mark Zukerberg. Corporate lawyers are paid to protect their employers from other lawyers, and they therefore write documents that assume the worst. The language in the TOS may have absolutely nothing to do with any business intention whatsoever.
It’s my expectation that before too long, one of these TOS clauses like the one Ivor quotes will be challenged in court and the way TOSes are written will shift in favor of the user as a result. It’s just like the lesson marketers are having to learn about social media — your employer will not thrive if you lock it in a cage. But the lawyers have to see the over-reaching TOS as a major threat first before they’ll change their ways, and the only way for that to happen is for someone to lose a lot of money because of one. Facebook would have been an awesome precedent if they’d kept the overreaching TOS and it resulted in a class action suit, but clearly Zuckerberg, or the Facebook board, overruled the lawyers in the end because they saw the threat to the business that the lawyers couldn’t.
Feb 24th, 2009
yenching
I rarely read the whole TOS and try to not to reveal too many important personal information on the social networking sites instead. This means that I don’t trust Facebook at all and I am worried about the exposure of the privacy all the time when I use the service. The collaborative idea may be fantastic because it helps to create trust between users and the company by dealing with the privacy issue together. Maybe this can make the users choose from different kinds of privacy levels and access different kinds of applications on Facebook, so that the users have a choice and understand how their personal information could be used better.
Feb 26th, 2009
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