“What to do about Facebook?”
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“What to do about Facebook?”
I have seen a lot of posts lately on Facebook of people trying to protect their personal data from reuse by Facebook. The post goes something like this: “Special thanks to Larry for this legal advice…. Due to the fact everyone is slowly getting hi-jacked yeah hi-jacked not hacked anymore they’re flat out hi-jacking our accounts, even more now. Just in case Notice: An attorney advised us to post this. The violation of privacy can be punished by law. NOTE: Facebook Meta is now a public entity. All members must post a note like this. If you do not publish a statement at least once, it will be technically understood that you are allowing the use of your photos, as well as the information contained in your profile status updates. I HEREBY STATE THAT I DO NOT GIVE MY PERMISSION TO USE ANY OF MY PERSONAL DATA OR PHOTOS. Copy and paste, do not share.”
I felt it necessary to inform my readers of the legalities behind Facebook, because I know that most of you have done exactly what I did when I set up my Facebook account more than a decade ago. You scrolled quickly down through the “Terms of Service” and clicked accept. This is a legally binding contract between Meta,the parent company of Facebook, and you. The “Terms of Service” explain everything, including how to break the contact and end your relationship with Facebook.
Seeing as most of us have not read the contract, we are now legally bound to things we may not even be aware of, and Meta updates the “Terms of Service” annually. I will highlight what I feel is the most important of these terms and any possible loop-holes that can get you around it.
The first, and to me the most important, is found on the Facebook website at https://facebook.com/terms.php, “Section 3. Your Commitments to Facebook and our community,” item “2. The permissions you give us.” You legally own the copyright of any content you post on Facebook, but you gave them a free license to use your content. It states: “You retain ownership of the intellectual property rights (things like copyright or trademarks) in any such content that you create and share on Facebook and other Meta Company Products you use. Nothing in these Terms takes away the rights you have to your own content. You are free to share your content with anyone else, wherever you want. However, to provide our services we need you to give us some legal permissions (known as a ‘license’) to use this content.”
When you give someone a license to use your content, they can use that content in any way that they see fit. This includes, but is not limited to, publishing your content online, or in a book, journal or newspaper. Facebook says, “you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, and worldwide license to host, use, distribute, modify, run, copy, publicly perform or display, translate, and create derivative works of your content.” The worst part of this is the term sub-licensable; this gives them the right to license your content to other parties and the only way out of this “contract” is to delete your content from Facebook. “This license will end when your content is deleted from our systems.” (Facebook Terms of Service)
There is only one way I know of to get around giving a license to Facebook for the entirety of your content, and it is not by posting that you do not give permission to use your content. I use this method myself when it comes to posting things like this article on Facebook. You have to create the content on a personal web site and share the link on Facebook.
However, there is a trick to this method as well; you need to read the “Terms of Service” related to the company you chose to use in hosting your website. I used to host my website on Google before reading their terms of service and finding that I gave Google the same rights I would have given Facebook had I just posted the content there. In fact nearly all of the easy web hosting services have this same policy, because they see themselves as publishers of your content. I pay for a service from http://www.epic.com for hosting my website, because they honor my privacy and do not require that I even show them the content of my website. I am my own publisher at https://www.techshepherd.org and legally own the rights to all the content published there. Epic is not the only provider out there with solid privacy policies, it is just the one I found easiest to use.
So basically if you want to protect your personal data, don’t post it directly to Facebook or any other social media account, as they all have license clauses in their “Terms of Service” that give them full publication rights to your content. So just remember, next time a friend posts an “I do not give permission” message, don’t bother copying and pasting it on your wall, because it will not end the contract you have with Meta.
Until next week, stay safe and learn something new.
Scott Hamilton is an Expert in Emerging Technologies at ATOS and can be reached with questions and comments via email to sh*******@**********rd.org or through his website at https://www.techshepherd.org.
I have seen a lot of posts lately on Facebook of people trying to protect their personal data from reuse by Facebook. The post goes something like this: “Special thanks to Larry for this legal advice…. Due to the fact everyone is slowly getting hi-jacked yeah hi-jacked not hacked anymore they’re flat out hi-jacking our accounts, even more now. Just in case Notice: An attorney advised us to post this. The violation of privacy can be punished by law. NOTE: Facebook Meta is now a public entity. All members must post a note like this. If you do not publish a statement at least once, it will be technically understood that you are allowing the use of your photos, as well as the information contained in your profile status updates. I HEREBY STATE THAT I DO NOT GIVE MY PERMISSION TO USE ANY OF MY PERSONAL DATA OR PHOTOS. Copy and paste, do not share.”
I felt it necessary to inform my readers of the legalities behind Facebook, because I know that most of you have done exactly what I did when I set up my Facebook account more than a decade ago. You scrolled quickly down through the “Terms of Service” and clicked accept. This is a legally binding contract between Meta,the parent company of Facebook, and you. The “Terms of Service” explain everything, including how to break the contact and end your relationship with Facebook.
Seeing as most of us have not read the contract, we are now legally bound to things we may not even be aware of, and Meta updates the “Terms of Service” annually. I will highlight what I feel is the most important of these terms and any possible loop-holes that can get you around it.
The first, and to me the most important, is found on the Facebook website at https://facebook.com/terms.php, “Section 3. Your Commitments to Facebook and our community,” item “2. The permissions you give us.” You legally own the copyright of any content you post on Facebook, but you gave them a free license to use your content. It states: “You retain ownership of the intellectual property rights (things like copyright or trademarks) in any such content that you create and share on Facebook and other Meta Company Products you use. Nothing in these Terms takes away the rights you have to your own content. You are free to share your content with anyone else, wherever you want. However, to provide our services we need you to give us some legal permissions (known as a ‘license’) to use this content.”
When you give someone a license to use your content, they can use that content in any way that they see fit. This includes, but is not limited to, publishing your content online, or in a book, journal or newspaper. Facebook says, “you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, and worldwide license to host, use, distribute, modify, run, copy, publicly perform or display, translate, and create derivative works of your content.” The worst part of this is the term sub-licensable; this gives them the right to license your content to other parties and the only way out of this “contract” is to delete your content from Facebook. “This license will end when your content is deleted from our systems.” (Facebook Terms of Service)
There is only one way I know of to get around giving a license to Facebook for the entirety of your content, and it is not by posting that you do not give permission to use your content. I use this method myself when it comes to posting things like this article on Facebook. You have to create the content on a personal web site and share the link on Facebook.
However, there is a trick to this method as well; you need to read the “Terms of Service” related to the company you chose to use in hosting your website. I used to host my website on Google before reading their terms of service and finding that I gave Google the same rights I would have given Facebook had I just posted the content there. In fact nearly all of the easy web hosting services have this same policy, because they see themselves as publishers of your content. I pay for a service from http://www.epic.com for hosting my website, because they honor my privacy and do not require that I even show them the content of my website. I am my own publisher at https://www.techshepherd.org and legally own the rights to all the content published there. Epic is not the only provider out there with solid privacy policies, it is just the one I found easiest to use.
So basically if you want to protect your personal data, don’t post it directly to Facebook or any other social media account, as they all have license clauses in their “Terms of Service” that give them full publication rights to your content. So just remember, next time a friend posts an “I do not give permission” message, don’t bother copying and pasting it on your wall, because it will not end the contract you have with Meta.
Until next week, stay safe and learn something new.
Scott Hamilton is an Expert in Emerging Technologies at ATOS and can be reached with questions and comments via email to sh*******@**********rd.org or through his website at https://www.techshepherd.org.
