February 21, 2009 by Matt Thomas
The statement made by the Facebook team about why they revised the controversial change to their terms of use on Wednesday seemed to strongly imply that it had been the result of pressure from Facebook users. However, that pressure had existed for weeks with Facebook simply maintaining their stance, stubbornly refusing to bend to the weight of public opinion. The day before founder, Mark Zuckerberg had even defended the changes on the company’s blog. So what changed?
Well, it appears that Facebook were given a bit of a convincer by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) in Washington. The consumer watchdog was preparing to file a suit with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). It appears Facebook got wind of this and, apparently lacking the stomach for another lawsuit days after paying out $65 million dollars in settlements to Zuckerberg’s former classmates, decided to climb down rapidly and change the terms of use back to the original.
How do we know this was the reason? Because, after hearing about the suit, Facebook executive’s called numerous privacy experts for advice and finally rang EPIC themselves to ask them outright whether they would drop the suit if they changed their terms back.
Sure, said EPIC chalking up a memorable victory over one of the giants of the Internet. EPIC one, Facebook nil, but I doubt the game’s over.
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Sadly, most people would not have looked closely enough to notice the change in Facebook’s Terms of Service… looks them social networkers are doing a good job of looking out for each other
Comment by coffee — February 23, 2009 @ 12:46 am