Facebook Caves to Community Demand, Retracts New Terms of Use

One almost gets the impression that Facebook tried to sneak their new terms of service past us, their faithful (or rather, hopelessly addicted) users. Two weeks ago Facebook revised their terms of use to include access to user data for eternity. Yes that’s right, For. Ev. Ver. Like signing a contract in blood with a digi-Mephistopheles, Facebook was hoping to get your soul in exchange for being able to read 25 things about everyone you went to high school with.

Honestly, I actually would sell my soul for the pleasures of Facebook. I’m in that deep. Happily though, I won’t have to. Facebook agreed to return to their original terms of use which only infernally bind we users to share our information until death (i.e. account cancellation) do us part.

Consumerist alerted the public to Facebook’s new terms which effectively stated: “anything you upload to Facebook can be used by Facebook in any way they deem fit, forever, no matter what you do later.” Sounds like a blood contract to me.

Nice try at getting my soul, Satanbook!

It’s really refreshing to see that some old school e-activism managed to get the 175+ million member strong Facebook to reverse its decision. At times it’s all too tempting to see ourselves as the unwitting subjects of these huge website-conglomerations like Google, Flickr, Facebook or countless others. I suppose we plebes still do wield a certain amount of power over the web-oligarchy.

Long live e-democracy!