Both faces peeked out from the wreckage of the privacy imbroglio that wracked the social networking site this week. Yes, it was asinine, a tempest in a teapot, but it underscored a more fundamental problem that continues to plague Facebook — the world's most popular social network is simply not learning from its mistakes. (Read “Why Facebook Is for Old Fogies.")
Quick recap: Earlier in the month, Facebook changed its users' terms of service (TOS) so that “the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content." A consumer-rights blog sounded the alarm last weekend, sparking a protest among users, who interpreted the move as insidious. Facebook, they said, would now own, forever and for always, all the deeply private and personal stuff you upload to Facebook to share with the whole world, even the pictures of your dog Muffy! “Facebook owns you!" critics cried. A few (very few) even went so far as to cancel their free accounts. (See the top 25 blogs of 2009.)
On Monday, CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg responded on his company blog, explaining that the change was needed to ensure that stuff like Wall posts and internal messages would remain intact even after someone quits the service. This would make sense — you don't want gaps in inter-user communications. But rather than mollify the masses, it inflamed them. So today, Zuckerberg recanted, and said that Facebook was reverting the TOS to its original language. The company would continue to study the situation, he said, and launched a Facebook Group, soliciting user feedback on how best to handle the situation as well as help define a users' Bill of Rights.
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