Criticism of Facebook From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Facebook's growth as an Internet social networking site has met criticism, on a range of issues including the privacy of users and unmoderated content affecting advertising. Contents [hide] 1 Privacy concerns 1.1 Issues during 2007 1.2 Sexual predators 1.3 News Feed and Mini-Feed 1.4 Complaint from CIPPC 1.5 Data mining 1.6 Inability to voluntarily terminate accounts 1.7 Memorials 1.8 Customization and security 2 New Facebook 2.1 September 2008 upgrade 2.2 March 2009 upgrade 3 Content controversies 3.1 Anorexia and bulimia 3.2 Advertiser concerns 3.3 Holocaust denial 4 Censorship controversies 4.1 Search function 4.2 Breastfeeding photos 5 Third-party responses to Facebook 5.1 Government censorship 5.2 Organizations blocking access 5.3 Schools blocking access 5.4 Closed social networks 6 Student-related issues 6.1 Student privacy concerns 6.2 Integration of high school users 6.3 Effect on higher education 7 Intellectual property rights 7.1 connectu.com lawsuit 7.2 Aaron Greenspan and houseSYSTEM 7.3 "Terms of Use" controversy 8 References [edit] Privacy concerns [edit] Issues during 2007 In August 2007, the code used to dynamically generate Facebook's home and search page as visitors browse the site was accidentally made public, according to leading internet news sites.[1][2] A configuration problem on a Facebook server caused the PHP code to be displayed instead of the web page the code should have created, raising concerns about how secure private data on the site was. A visitor to the site copied, published and later removed the code from his web forum, claiming he had been served legal notice by Facebook.[3] Facebook's response was quoted by the site that broke the story:[4] “ A small fraction of the code that displays Facebook web pages was exposed to a small number of users due to a single misconfigured web server that was fixed immediately. It was not a security breach and did not compromise user data in any way. Because the code that was released powers only Facebook user interface, it offers no useful insight into the inner workings of Facebook. The reprinting of this code violates several laws and we ask that people not distribute it further. ” In November 2007, Facebook launched Beacon, a system where third-party websites can include a script by Facebook on their sites, and use it to send information about the actions of Facebook users on their site to Facebook, prompting serious privacy concerns. Information such as purchases made and games played are published in the user's news feed. An informative notice about this action appears on the third party site and gives the user the opportunity to cancel it, and the user can also cancel it on Facebook. Originally if no action was taken, the information was automatically published. On November 29 this was changed to require confirmation from the user before publishing each story gathered by Beacon. However, there is still no option to prevent Facebook from storing and using information sent by Beacon. [5] On Dec. 1, 2007 Facebook's credibility in regard to the Beacon program was further tested when it was reported that the New York Times "essentially accuses" Mark Zuckerberg of lying to the paper and leaving Coca-Cola, which is reversing course on the program, a similar impression.[6] A security engineer at CA, Inc. also claimed that Facebook is collecting data from affiliate sites even when the consumer opts out and even when not logged into the Facebook site, a contradiction of Facebook public claims and email correspondence.[7] [edit] Sexual predators "Much of the attention in the popular press and professional literature has focused on sexual predators that seek out their victims through online venues such as Facebook.” Since Facebook allows us to see who is doing what, where, and with whom we already know a lot about a person. Through these news feeds, we know who are friends with whom, who ended a relationship with whom, who posted new pictures, and who is having a bad day. With this much information about a person it makes it very easy on sexual predators to find their prey.[8] [edit] News Feed and Mini-Feed On September 5, 2006, Facebook introduced two new features called "News Feed" and "Mini-Feed". The first of the new features, News Feed, appears on every Facebook member's home page, displaying recent Facebook activities of the member's friends. The second feature, Mini-Feed, keeps a log of similar events on each member's profile page.[9] Members can manually delete items from their Mini-Feeds if they wish to do so, and through privacy settings can control what is actually published in their respective Mini-Feeds. Some Facebook members still feel that the ability to opt out of the entire News Feed and Mini-Feed system is necessary, as evidenced by a statement from the Students Against Facebook News Feed group, which peaked at over 740,000 members.[10] However, according to recent news articles, members have widely regarded the additional privacy options as an acceptable compromise.[11] In September 2008, the news feed and "Wall" were retroactively combined, reigniting privacy concerns over the "news feed" feature by publicly posting previously hidden actions. [edit] Complaint from CIPPC The Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, per Director Phillipa Lawson, filed a 35-page complaint with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner against Facebook on May 31, 2008, based on 22 breaches of the Canadian Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (Pipeda). Facebook's Chris Kelly contradicted the claims, saying that: "We've reviewed the complaint and found it has serious factual errors — most notably its neglect of the fact that almost all Facebook data is willingly shared by users."[12] University of Ottawa law students, Lisa Feinberg, Harley Finkelstein and Jordan Plener, initiated the "minefield of privacy invasion" suit which was investigated by Canadian Privacy Commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart, who will submit the report and recommendations within a year. She will utilize negotiation to resolve privacy disputes, but can ask for court injunctions.[13] [edit] Data mining There have been some concerns expressed regarding the use of Facebook as a means of surveillance and data mining. Theories have been written about the possible misuse of Facebook[14] and privacy proponents have criticised the site's current privacy agreement.[15] According to the policy, "We may use information about you that we collect from other sources, including but not limited to newspapers and Internet sources such as blogs, instant messaging services and other users of Facebook, to supplement your profile." However, some features—such as AIM away-message harvesting and campus newspaper monitoring—have been dropped, even though the clause still remains in the policy as of November 26, 2008. The possibility of data mining by private individuals unaffiliated with Facebook remains open, as evidenced by the fact that two MIT students were able to download, using an automated script, over 70,000 Facebook profiles from four schools (MIT, NYU, the University of Oklahoma, and Harvard) as part of a research project on Facebook privacy published on December 14, 2005.[16] A second clause that warranted criticism from some users reserved the right to sell users' data to private companies, stating "We may share your information with third parties, including responsible companies with which we have a relationship." This concern was addressed by spokesman Chris Hughes who said "Simply put, we have never provided our users' information to third party companies, nor do we intend to."[17] Facebook eventually removed this clause from their privacy policy when it was updated on November 26, 2008. Third party applications have access to almost all user information and "Facebook does not screen or approve Platform Developers and cannot control how such Platform Developers use any personal information."[15] In the UK, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) has encouraged employers to allow their staff to access Facebook and other social networking sites from work, provided they proceed with caution.[18] In September 2007, Facebook drew a fresh round of criticism after it began allowing non-members to search for users, with the intent of opening limited "public profiles" up to search engines such as Google in the following months.[19] In November 2007, Facebook launched a new part of its Ads system named Beacon that published Facebook users' activities on partner websites such as eBay, Fandango, Travelocity, and Blockbuster to their friends. Moveon.org created an online petition due to privacy concerns, and Facebook modified the service to some extent. However, privacy concerns have continued in the wake of a report by a security researcher at Computer Associates that noted that data on users' activities is often still sent to Facebook, even if a user has opted-out on the partner site and logged out of Facebook. Concerns were also raised on the BBC's Watchdog programme in October 2007 when Facebook was shown to be an easy way in which to collect an individual's personal information in order to facilitate identity theft.[20] In addition, a New York Times article in February 2008 pointed out that Facebook does not actually provide a mechanism for users to close their accounts, and thus raises the concern that private user data will remain indefinitely on Facebook's servers.[21] This college forum took it further and promoted a video which took an in depth look at the amount of data Facebook stores on its users, and who is able to view it. [edit] Inability to voluntarily terminate accounts Facebook has historically allowed users to deactivate their accounts but not actually remove account content from its servers. A Facebook representative explained to a student from the University of British Columbia that users had to clear their own accounts by manually deleting all of the content including wall posts, friends, and groups. The considerable effort dissuaded people from doing so.[22] A New York Times article noted the issue, and also raised a concern that emails and other private user data remain indefinitely on Facebook's servers.[23] Facebook subsequently began permanently deleting accounts on special request. [1] [edit] Memorials A notable ancillary effect of social networking websites, particularly Facebook, is the ability for participants to mourn publicly for a deceased individual. On Facebook, students often leave messages of sadness, grief, or hope on the individual's page, transforming it into a sort of public book of condolences. This particular phenomenon has been documented at a number of schools.[24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33] Previously, Facebook had stated that its official policy on the matter was to remove the profile of the deceased one month after he or she has died,[34] preventing the profile from being used for communal mourning, citing privacy concerns. Due to user response, Facebook amended its policy. Its new policy is to place deceased members' profiles in a "memorialization state".[35] Additional usage of Facebook as a tool of remembrance is expressed in group memberships on the site. Now that groups are community-wide and available among all networks, many users create Facebook groups not only to remember a deceased friend or individual but also as a source of support in response to an occurrence such as the September 11, 2001 attacks or the Virginia Tech massacre in April 2007. Such memorial groups have also raised legal issues. Notably, on January 1, 2008, one such memorial group posted the identities of murdered Toronto teenager Stefanie Rengel, whose family had not yet given the Toronto Police Service their consent to release her name to the media, and her accused killers, in defiance of Canada's Youth Criminal Justice Act which prohibits publishing the names of under-age criminals.[36] While police and Facebook staff attempted to comply with the privacy regulations by deleting such posts, they noted that it was difficult to effectively police the individual users who repeatedly republished the deleted information.[37] [edit] Customization and security Facebook is often compared to MySpace but one significant difference between the two sites is the level of customization. MySpace allows users to decorate their profiles using HTML and CSS while Facebook allows only plain text. However, a number of users have tweaked their profiles by using "hacks." On February 24, 2006, a pair of users exploited a cross-site scripting (XSS) hole on the profile page and created a fast-spreading worm, loading a custom CSS file on infected profiles that made them look like MySpace profiles.[38] On April 19, 2006, a user was able to embed an iframe into his profile and load a custom off-site page featuring a streaming video and a flash game from Drawball. He has since been banned from Facebook.[39] On March 26, 2006, a user was able to embed JavaScript in the "Hometown" field of his profile which imported his custom CSS.[40] In each case, Facebook quickly patched the holes, typically within hours of their discovery. In July 2007, Adrienne Felt, an undergraduate student at the University of Virginia, discovered a cross-site scripting (XSS) hole in the Facebook Platform that could inject JavaScript into profiles, which was used to import custom CSS and demonstrate how the platform could be used to violate privacy rules or create a worm.[41] This hole took Facebook two and a half weeks to fix.[42] [edit] New Facebook [edit] September 2008 upgrade In September 2008, Facebook permanently moved its users to what they termed the "New Facebook".[43] This version contained several different features and a complete layout redesign. Users had had the option to use the new Facebook in place of the original design since July,[44] but had also had the option to return to the old design. Facebook's decision to migrate their users was met with some controversy in their community. Several groups were started opposing the decision, some with over a million users.[45] [edit] March 2009 upgrade This section requires expansion. In March 2009, yet another major change was made to Facebook's layout. The home page no longer shows a random assortment of news items, but only status updates and wall posts, with little to differentiate the two items. This was met with almost universal criticism, much more disapproval than even the previous layout of Facebook. A major issue concerning the new layout is privacy; users are now automatically provided wall posts by their friends instead of electing to view them by accessing individual pages. The new layout has also been criticised for making it more difficult to see upcoming birthdays and events. In a poll done by Facebook, by the morning of March 30 over 1,300,000 people responded, with around 94% disliking the layout (1,258,458) and 6% liking it (82,363).[46] [edit] Content controversies [edit] Anorexia and bulimia Facebook has received criticism from users and from people outside the Facebook community about hosting pro-anorexia and pro-bulimia information.[47] British eating disorder charity B-EAT called on all social networking sites to curb "pro-ana" (anorexia) and "pro-mia" (bulimia) pages and groups, naming MySpace and Facebook specifically.[48] [edit] Advertiser concerns On 3 August 2007, British companies including First Direct, Vodafone, Virgin Media, The Automobile Association, Halifax and the Prudential removed their advertisements from Facebook. A Virgin Media spokeswoman said "We want to advertise on social networks but we have to protect our brand". The companies found that their services were being advertised on pages of the British National Party, a far-right political party in the UK. New Media Age magazine was first to alert the companies that their ads were coming up on BNP's Facebook page. The AA also pulled its advertising from YouTube when a BBC documentary showed that videos of school children fighting were available on that site.[49] [edit] Holocaust denial In 2009, Facebook received criticism for including Holocaust denial groups.[50] Barry Schnitt, a spokesman for Facebook, said, "We want Facebook to be a place where ideas, even controversial ideas, can be discussed." While Facebook's terms of use include the warning that users may "be banned if they post 'any content that we deem to be harmful, threatening, unlawful, defamatory, infringing, abusive, inflammatory, harassing, vulgar, obscene, fraudulent, invasive of privacy or publicity rights, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable,'" Schnitt said, "We can't guarantee that there isn't any content that violates our policies." [edit] Censorship controversies [edit] Search function Facebook's search function has been accused of preventing users from searching for certain terms. Michael Arrington of TechCrunch has written about Facebook's possible censorship of "Ron Paul" as a search term. MoveOn.org's Facebook group for organizing protests against privacy violations could for a time not be found by searching. The very word privacy was also restricted.[51] Facebook claimed that the problem was a bug. [edit] Breastfeeding photos See also: Breastfeeding in public Facebook has been criticized for removing photos uploaded by mothers of themselves breastfeeding their babies, and also canceling their Facebook accounts. While claiming that these photos violate their decency code by showing an exposed breast, even when the baby covered the nipple, Facebook took several days to respond to calls to deactivate a paid advertisement for a dating service that used a photo of a topless model.[52] The breastfeeding controversy continued following public protests and the growth in the the online membership in the Facebook group titled "Hey, Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene!(Official petition to Facebook)."[53] [edit] Third-party responses to Facebook [edit] Government censorship In November 2007, Facebook was blocked by the Syrian government on the premise that it promoted attacks on the authorities.[54][55] No comment was made from the government that blocked it, which started a crackdown on online political activism in that period. Burma, Bhutan, and Iran are among nations to have banned the website.[citation needed] [edit] Organizations blocking access Ontario government employees, Federal public servants, MPPs, and cabinet ministers were blocked from access to Facebook on government computers in May 2007.[56] When the employees tried to access Facebook, a warning message "The Internet website that you have requested has been deemed unacceptable for use for government business purposes". This warning also appears when employees try to access YouTube, MySpace, gambling or pornographic websites.[57] However, innovative employees have found ways around such protocols, and many claim to use the site for political or work-related purposes.[58] The New South Wales Department of Education and Training has also blocked all users (students and staff) from accessing Facebook, as have many other government departments in Australia. The City of New York Department of Health and Hospitals blocks Facebook from use at work.[citation needed] [edit] Schools blocking access The University of New Mexico (UNM) in October 2005 blocked access to Facebook from UNM campus computers and networks, citing unsolicited e-mails and a similar site called UNM Facebook.[59] After a UNM user signed into Facebook from off campus, a message from Facebook said, "We are working with the UNM administration to lift the block and have explained that it was instituted based on erroneous information, but they have not yet committed to restore your access." UNM, in a message to students who tried to access the site from the UNM network, wrote, "This site is temporarily unavailable while UNM and the site owners work out procedural issues. The site is in violation of UNM's Acceptable Computer Use Policy for abusing computing resources (e.g., spamming, trademark infringement, etc). The site forces use of UNM credentials (e.g., NetID or email address) for non-UNM business." However, after Facebook created an encrypted login and displayed a precautionary message not to use university passwords for access, UNM unblocked access the following spring semester.[60] The Columbus Dispatch reported on June 22, 2006, that Kent State University's athletic director had planned to ban the use of Facebook by athletes and gave them until August 1 to delete their accounts.[61] On July 5, 2006, the Daily Kent Stater reported that the director reversed the decision after reviewing the privacy settings of Facebook. Since it violates many school boards' terms of use for the internet along with local and state laws, many school boards in North America, Europe and Oceania that run elementary through high schools have blocked access to Facebook. [edit] Closed social networks Several web sites concerned with social networking[62] have criticized the lack of information that users get when they share data. Advanced users can limit the amount of information anyone can access in their profiles, but Facebook promotes the sharing of personal information for marketing purposes, leading to the promotion of the service using personal data from users which are not fully aware of this. Furthermore, Facebook exposes personal data, without supporting open standards for data interchange.[63] According to several communities [64] and authors [65] closed social networking, on the other hand, promotes data retrieval from other people while not exposing one's personal information. [edit] Student-related issues [edit] Student privacy concerns Students who post illegal or otherwise inappropriate material have faced disciplinary action from their universities, including expulsion.[66] [edit] Integration of high school users Following the February 27, 2006 integration of the high school and college levels, some college users began creating groups critical of the decision.[67] Users from the two branches could fully interact only if they were friends and some separation did remain. The site also released the Limited Profile privacy settings and advised students on how to hide pictures and other features from others. However, some college users felt that the site's former exclusivity had been key to their experience.[68] Some expressed concerns about the ability of unknown persons to create accounts on the high school version (since university addresses are not required) and use them to access the college version; by default, strangers can message and view users' friends through a simple global search. Some made predictions that the site would soon face issues with spammers, stalkers, or worse, and worried this would result in controversies similar to the bad publicity seen by MySpace.[69] Adding to the controversy around opening Facebook to younger students, four high school students at Birchmount Park Collegiate Institute in Toronto, Ontario were arrested in a Facebook-related protest on March 23, 2007. Earlier that week, five students had been suspended for posting criticisms about a vice-principal of their school. About a dozen friends of the suspendees had decided to protest in front of the school, but that handful soon grew to over 100 students protesting for free speech. Local law enforcement authorities were called, and a scuffle ensued, resulting in the arrest of four students.[70] [edit] Effect on higher education On January 23, 2006, The Chronicle of Higher Education continued an ongoing national debate on social networks with an opinion piece written by Michael Bugeja, director of the Journalism School at Iowa State University, entitled "Facing the Facebook".[71] Bugeja, author of the Oxford University Press text Interpersonal Divide (2005), quoted representatives of the American Association of University Professors and colleagues in higher education to document the distraction of students using Facebook and other social networks during class and at other venues in the wireless campus. Bugeja followed up on January 26, 2007 in The Chronicle with an article titled "Distractions in the Wireless Classroom,"[72] quoting several educators across the country who were banning laptops in the classroom. Similarly, organisations such as the National Association for Campus Activities,[73] the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication,[74] and others have hosted seminars and presentations to discuss ramifications of students' use of Facebook and other social networking systems. The EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative has also released a brief pamphlet entitled "7 Things You Should Know About Facebook" aimed at higher education professionals that "describes what [Facebook] is, where it is going, and why it matters to teaching and learning".[75] The most recent research[citation needed] on Facebook in higher education shows that there are educational benefits to student Facebook use, including improving engagement which is related to student retention.[76] Furthermore, using technologies such as Facebook to connect with others can help college students be less depressed and cope with feelings of loneliness and homesickness.[77] According to a case study, students surveyed had on average lower grades if they used facebook than students who did not use facebook.[78] [edit] Intellectual property rights [edit] connectu.com lawsuit Divya Narendra, Cameron Winklevoss, and Tyler Winklevoss, owners of the social networking website HarvardConnection, changed its name to ConnectU in September 2004 and filed a lawsuit against Facebook, alleging that Zuckerberg had broken an oral contract for them to build the Facebook site, copied their idea,[79][80] and illegally used source code intended for the website they asked him to build for them.[81][82][83][84] The parties reached a confidential settlement agreement in February, 2008.[85] ConnectU filed another lawsuit on March 11, 2008,[86] attempting to rescind the settlement, claiming that Facebook in settlement negotiations had overstated the value of stock it was granting the ConnectU founders as part of the settlement. ConnectU argued that Facebook represented itself as being worth $15 billion, the post-money valuation arising from Microsoft's purchase in 2007 of a 1.6% stake in Facebook for US $246 million. Facebook announced that valuation in a press release.[87] However, Facebook subsequently performed an internal valuation that estimated a company value of $3.75 billion.[88] Further, the website's 0.02%-0.04% ad click-through rate has led some analysts to believe that the site does not have a viable long-term business model.[89] ConnectU fired the law firm that had represented it in settlement discussions, and the firm in turn filed a lien against the settlement proceeds.[90] In June, 2008, an appeals court upheld the earlier settlement, rejecting ConnectU's new challenge.[85] In February 2009, it was reported that a settlement was reached between Facebook and the ConnectU litigants. Facebook will pay USD $65 million to the plaintiffs, most of it in Facebook stock, and $20M in cash.[91] ConnectU's law firm, Quinn, has asked for $13 million in legal fees. [edit] Aaron Greenspan and houseSYSTEM As the President of the Harvard College Student Entrepreneurship Council (a now-defunct student group) and the CEO of Think Computer Corporation[92], Aaron Greenspan created a web portal as a Harvard undergraduate called houseSYSTEM that launched on August 1, 2003. Designed to centralize student life in a more user-friendly manner than Harvard's official student portal, my.harvard houseSYSTEM had a variety of features, including an event calendar with digital RSVP, a photo album, user-uploadable "posters," a teaching feedback system called CriticalMass,[93] an on-line trading post called Student Exchange, and as of September 19, 2003, a "Universal Face Book," which was also referred to at times as "the facebook." Greenspan began communicating with fellow classmate Mark Zuckerberg via e-mail later in the fall of 2003 after reading a profile of Zuckerberg in The Harvard Crimson's news magazine, and they met in person in early January, 2004, at which point Zuckerberg (and the other co-founders of Facebook, Inc.) were already houseSYSTEM members. Though the two entrepreneurs decided to work on their respective projects independently, they frequently discussed technological aspects of houseSYSTEM related to the Face Book, as well as Zuckerberg's latest project, about which he was secretive.[94] On January 11, 2004, shortly after using the Universal Face Book on houseSYSTEM, Zuckerberg registered the domain name "thefacebook.com" independently.[95] On February 4, 2004, when thefacebook.com launched, Greenspan recognized aspects of his own work in the site, and later came to believe that Zuckerberg was copying his work one feature at a time--a claim that Zuckerberg denied. Social networking functionality was added to houseSYSTEM in March, 2004, and the name "FaceNet" replaced the "Universal Face Book."[96] Four years later, when Greenspan published a book entitled Authoritas: One Student's Harvard Admissions and the Founding of the Facebook Era describing his side of the story of Facebook's birth as well as events leading up to it (including aggressive actions on behalf of the Harvard University administration[97]), he was prohibited from advertising the book using Google AdWords because of the inclusion of the word "Facebook" in the book's subtitle, and Facebook, Inc.'s registered trademark on the term "Facebook."[98] The trademark had come into existence two years before in 2006, partially as a defensive measure during a battle over the "facebook.com" domain name in the ConnectU lawsuit.[99] Consequently, Greenspan's company filed a Petition to Cancel the "Facebook" trademark, which included claims of prior use, genericness, and fraud by Facebook, Inc. against the USPTO. Greenspan is representing himself and the proceedings are still pending, but as of late October 2008, the USPTO has refused to grant Facebook's request to dismiss the fraud claims.[100] In February 2009, it was reported that a settlement was reached between Facebook and the ConnectU litigants. Facebook will pay USD $65 million to the plaintiffs, most of it in Facebook stock, and the rest in cash.[101] [edit] "Terms of Use" controversy While Facebook originally made changes to its terms of use [2] or, terms of service, on February 4, 2009, the changes went unnoticed until Chris Walters, a blogger for the consumer-oriented blog, The Consumerist, noticed the change on February 15, 2009.[102] Walters complained the change gave Facebook the right to "Do anything they want with your content. Forever."[103] The section under the most controversy is the "User Content Posted on the Site" clause. Before the changes, the clause read, "You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content."[104] The "license granted" refers to the license that Facebook has to your "name, likeness, and image" to use in promotions and external advertising.[105] The new terms of use deleted the phrase that states the license would "automatically expire" if a user chose to remove content. By omitting this line, Facebook license extends to adopt users' content perpetually and irrevocably years after the content has been deleted.[106] Many users of Facebook voiced opinions against the changes to the Facebook Terms of Use, leading to an Internet-wide debate over the ownership of content. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) prepared a formal complaint with the Federal Trade Commission. Many individuals were frustrated with the removal of the controversial clause. Facebook users, numbering more than 38,000, joined a user group against the changes, and a number of blogs and news sites have written about this issue.[107] After the change was brought to light in Walters's blog entry, in his blog on February 16, 2009, Mark Zuckerberg addressed the issues concerning the recently made changes to Facebook’s terms of use. Zuckerberg wrote “Our philosophy is that people own their information and control who they share it with.”[108] In addition to this statement Zuckerman explained the paradox created when people want to share their information (phone number, pictures, email address, etc) with the public, but at the same time desire to remain in complete control of who has access to this info.[109] In order to calm criticism, Facebook returned to its original terms of use. However, on February 17, 2009, Zuckerberg wrote in his blog, that although Facebook reverted back to its original terms of use, it is in the process of developing new terms in order to address the paradox. Zuckerberg stated that these new terms will allow Facebook users to “share and control their information, and it will be written clearly in language everyone can understand.” Zuckerberg invited users to join a group entitled “Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities”[110] to give their input and help shape the new terms. On February 26 of 2009, Zuckerberg posted a blog, updating users on the progress of the new Terms of Use. He wrote, “We decided we needed to do things differently and so we're going to develop new policies that will govern our system from the ground up in an open and transparent way.” Zuckerberg introduces the two new additions to Facebook: the Facebook Principles[111] and the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities[112] Both additions allow users to vote on changes to the terms of use before they are officially released. Because “Facebook is still in the business of introducing new and therefore potentially disruptive technologies,” Zuckerberg explains, users need to adjust and familiarize themselves with the products before they can adequately show their support.[113] This new voting system was initially applauded as Facebook’s step to a more democratized social network system.[114] However, the new terms were harshly criticized in a report by computer scientists from the University of Cambridge, who stated that the democratic process surrounding the new terms is disingenuous and significant problems remain in the new terms.[115][116] Their report was endorsed by the Open Rights Group.[117] [edit] References ^ Hoffman, Harrison (2007-08-12). "Facebook's source code goes public". CNET News.com. http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9758702-7.html. ^ Richards, Jonathan (2007-08-14). "Facebook Source Code Leaked Onto Internet". 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University of Cambridge. http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2009/03/29/commentary-on-facebooks-terms-of-service/. Retrieved on 2009-04-04. ^ "Democracy Theatre: Comments on Facebook’s Proposed Governance Scheme". University of Cambridge. http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~jcb82/2009-03-29-facebook-comments.pdf. Retrieved on 2009-04-04. ^ "Facebook’s theatrical rights and wrongs". Open Rights Group. http://www.openrightsgroup.org/2009/04/01/facebook%E2%80%99s-theatrical-rights-and-wrongs/. Retrieved on 2009-04-04. [hide]v • d • eFacebook Website Facebook Beacon · Facebook features People Mark Zuckerberg (founder) · Chris Hughes (co-founder) · Dustin Moskovitz (co-founder) · Sheryl Sandberg (COO) · Peter Thiel Other Criticism of Facebook · Facebook in investigations · Wirehog (suspended) Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Facebook" Categories: Criticisms | Criticisms of companies | Facebook