Facebook Change of Regulations

From the 1st of June to the 8th of June 2012, Facebook opened a "voting" which I would rather call "pool", because at the end it is Facebook itself that decides what actions to take.

Nevertheless, I think it is important to vote. Firstly because they gave us a chance to, but also because some sort of action must be taken from its side, if too many people are not happy with the changes in the SRR (Statements of Rights and Responsibility) and Data Use Policy.

Yes, yet another change in Facebook regulations. For some reason, though, Facebook did not publicize this very well. I got to know this just today, while events such as the introduction of the Timeline were repeatedly posted in the Facebook main page. Is there something going on? I don't know, but this time I wanted to be sure I read all the regulations carefully (or as much carefully as I can).

Unfortunately, even if everyone should have and should do, I am sure only a few percentage of the Facebook users actually read the regulations. Mostly because of lack of time (which is a bit contradictory, given that time will be wasted on Facebook anyway) or laziness.
For that reason I wanted to be of some help and read all of the old and new regulation, trying to group the main changes and the points which stand out of the long and tedious list of already known regulations.
Also, Facebook provided some pages related to the changes, but they might be misleading in the sense that they (obviously) depict the change as an improvement and do not talk about the potential problems.

Proposed changes (as of April-May 2012)

SRR

• Section 2.3: the sentence: "When you use an application, the application may ask for your permission to access your content and information" was completed with "as well as content and information that others have shared with you".
  
  What does this mean? If you share something with your friend, e.g. like a page "I love doughnuts", an application which your friend uses may steal (rightfully) this information about you.
  
  Is this fair? Of course not, because everything you now share can be potentially sold to companies not by you, but by your friends using some application. For example, it might be a news application, that your friend uses, that knowing that you love doughnuts, will now show more doughnut-related news to you. But according to Facebook, it was already in the Privacy Policy since May 2008, and now has also been specified in the SRR. I do not agree with this, but Facebook finds its ways, apparently, and cover this as an "improvement in the social experience".
  
  Fortunately, not many people know, but you have control about what apps can see about your information and turn them off (reccomended) in the Privacy Settings under “Apps and Websites”.
• Section 3.7: not a big deal (hopefully), changing the word hateful to hate speech.
• Section 5.9: added a clause "You will not tag users or send email invitations to non-users without their consent". This is not a change in the tagging system, but a statement.
• Section 6.3: change of wording, maybe a bit more general now, but the meaning is the same. This applies for mobiles. The concept is that anything you have on your device can be rightfully used by Facebook within their regulations when you sync it. It is a horrible thing, but it was there already.
• Section 8: changed the word "Share links" to "Social Plugins". This may seem like a small change but it is not quite. This whole section is dedicated on the rights they have if you put the "Share on Facebook" or "Like on Facebook" button in your website/blog. Before, there was only the share button, but now, with many changes, there are others, like the Like, so basically if any of these Social plugins is in your website, you will be strictly tied up on Facebook. You can find the Social plugins here, I'm sure you've seen them already in other sites.
  
  The consequences? Everything you write on your website/blog post must follow Facebook regulations, and you give permission to use the content of the page in which the Social Plugin is. This was the case before with the Share button, but now it has extended to every single plugin. Is the change fair? Maybe, since they had the same regulations just for the share button before, but many of the plugins are not related at all with sharing, but only to post comments or recommend similar pages.
  
  What is not fair is in the fact that putting any of those button in your website gives some rights to Facebook. It is like when banks give out free pens as advertisement, then they ask you that whatever you write with those can be used by them against you. But that was already there in previous regulations.
• Section 13: this is a new section regarding updates on any Facebook Software (since this is a new thing) and pointing out the fact that it is not open source.
• Section 14: this section regards the change on the regulation itself and how will you be notified and when. There are a few points added here, regarding how you accept the regulations.
  
  For how ridiculous it might sound: you automatically accept the regulations if you continue using Facebook, even if you haven't read the regulations. It's like signing a contract automatically because you have not obliged. And the only way to do so, is leaving Facebook. Very democratic, I would say.
  Also, it is in your interest to read the new regulations on the Site Governance Page (that come up less than yearly now) and "accept" them by continuing using Facebook.
• Section 17: this section is about legality in global terms, for countries outside USA. The change is that they added "non-users" in the regulations. For non-user they mean pages of companies or websites which are not single users. I think this is a fair change, as that could have been a hole now that even non-users can have pages on Facebook.
  
  Unfortunately, according to this section, anything you have on Facebook can be used by the US government against you. But this was present in the previous regulation as well.
  
  
  

Data Use Policy

There are some general changes on words due to the introduction of Timeline, but let's pass to the main points:

•  Section I: describes the information they receive and how is it used
  
  -   There are a few more sources of how they receive information from your friends or your actions, but it should be obvious that anything done while logged in Facebook is a source of information for them.
  -   They removed this clause on how they treat data about you coming from advertising companies: "When we receive data about you from our advertising partners or customers, we keep the data for 180 days. After that, we combine the data with other people's data in a way that it is no longer associated with you." . This is a big (negative) change and the consequence is that Facebook will keep data associated with your name for as long as they want to, giving them more power of choice.
  -   They added more specific (but confusing) uses of your data, as providing specific ads based on your interests (they were already doing that, though), or mysterious data analysis and research.
  -   There are more detailed information about account deactivation and deletion, and data retention, which were already applied, but not specified (they keep information about your account even after deletion).
• Section II: this section describes the sharing and finding of users
  
  -   More information and tips about privacy are added, some of them obvious and some of them not really adding anything new, but not a bad thing overall.
  -   More tips for mobile users and reminders of privacy concerns, connecting with SRR:Section-6.
  -   Addition of new rules for new tools coming from the swap to Timeline.
• Section III: this section describes regulation for social plugins, other websites and applications
  
  -   Again more information about Facebook Platform and social plugins, which are new since the last regulations. I have talked about them in the SRR regulations, above.
• Section IV: this section describes the working of advertising and sponsored stories
  
  -   There is more information about cookies.
  -   More details about the ads off Facebook, which may be based on information about you gathered from the website. Delicious news for advertisement companies, but nothing really new.
  -   Explanation of the difference between sponsored stories and ads.
  
   
• Section V: a new section specifically on cookies and similar evilry. They suggest that cookies can be removed or blocked, but the problem is that they do not tell that Facebook needs cookies to work otherwise it won't work at all.
• Section VI: this section is about other information which didn't fit into previous sections. This is mostly about legal disputes. But, also, they introduce a new "Download Your Information" tool that permits to download the user information and history. The problem is that using that you will download only part of the information they keep within the servers, which might be the public information. It does not provide a way to download the raw entire information about a profile. The rest is new features and Timeline changes.

General comments on the changes

In conclusion, my view on the changes is that I oppose them.

Facebook is trying to get slowly more power, by the action of slow changes and by letting users "accept" the changes without asking for permission. The SRR has worsened and the Data Use Policy contains more information of things Facebook was doing already but that were not specified in written form (and it's not good things, unfortunately).

Whatever your view is, please vote, as it will not do harm, but most importantly, you should also read carefully what you are going into, before giving out your life to a company.

Boris bikes

It has been a while since Boris Johnson, current Major of London, introduced the bicycle sharing scheme and I had a chance to use them as well, now.

There are really many advantages in using "Boris bikes" as:

-   It's cheap and easy to rent. You can purchase a day or week access fee and then you are off. The first 30 minutes of renting is free, which is reasonable for any short distance in Central London, more convenient than taking a bus, for which a return ticket would cost almost three times the price of renting a cycle.

-   Cycling is good for your health, etc. etc.

-   You don't need to worry about where to tie down your own cycle, and then no need to worry about cycle thieves (which I'm still thanking for easing my decision towards buying a new wheel and a new saddle).

The downsides, though, can unfortunately be pretty terrible:

-   You can't leave your cycle everywhere and you need to find a docking station and then plan your route in advance, unless you have a lot of confidence in your luck (sometimes they are hidden from the main roads).

-   It is amazing how difficult is to find a cycle at certain times. As many people are using them, the locations in the centre are filled up in the morning and emptied at night, while the opposite happens for locations outside the centre. This is understandable as people go back home at night and go to work in the morning. Unfortunately, I need exactly the opposite (usually: going back home drunk at night and leaving home when I wake up in the afternoon) and it is extremely frustrating and time-wasting looking for the nearest docking station with cycles in it, and it also becomes a problem when you have to leave your cycle and the docking station is full.

I think that I'll continue to use the service, though. Not that I don't mind walking for 20 minutes looking for a non-empty docking station, but maybe the desire to find it full when I need it will regulate my already messed-up body clock.

My (second) take on Facebook

"Once you have shared any information online, even with a restricted audience, you need to consider that as being in the public domain. Although you may be able to control which members of your social circle can see that information, you can't control what they do with it."

-Rik Ferguson

What would have been the best way to celebrate the re-opening of this blog?
Looking at the motivations that moved me to open it, of course!

I've looked at the first post on this blog, back in 2009 and I've been repeatedly pierced by its sharpness. I had some good hate against Facebook, such that I even put the label "hate" to the post and deleted my account. Good move, I'd say now, but I think I rejoined Facebook after a week, if I remember well.

That was only 3 years ago and the world has changed much, and I have as well with it. And so did Facebook. Let's see some of its milestones:

- Facebook is approaching 1 billion users. Humans are bad in judging dimensions, so I'll try to let it picture to you in easier words: one every seven persons in the World (including poor countries) is on Facebook. That is more than three times the population of US.

- A movie has been made about Facebook. If you would have told someone in the nineties that a movie about a website would be shot, they would just laugh at you and wrote about your outrageous idea on their geocities.

- Facebook has decided to go through its initial public offering, and the company could value as much as $105 billion. It hopes to raise $10 billion when it begins to sell its shares and that would dwarf Google's. (Update: it did already!)

- Timeline has been introduced and the general look and workings of Facebook has changed.

In a few words, Facebook has now got power. This is something that did not happen before. We all know what happened to social networking websites as MySpace or Live Messenger. They have been very popular and they are now a cemetery of the past. Will this happen to Facebook as well? I do not think so. It has established well on the internet (and now even the market) and it will be hard to see its end soon thanks to its slick CEO and the huge popularity it has reached. In social networking websites people look for places where they can find most of the friends they know in real life and that is already a huge disadvantage for any other website that wants to take off.

What scares me most is when people say: "Internet is Facebook". If that would be the case in the future, I would officially declare the internet dead. I might be a bit too nostalgic, but the golden period of internet was right at the beginning of Web 2.0. For those who think Internet is Facebook, I can safely say that they have never known the Internet. Nowadays, though, it is difficult to stay away from Facebook as it is the most convenient and free (for now, even if I think it will always be) way to connect with friends. It has cunning traps, though, so if we can't avoid it, what to do?


Use your brain before sharing. This is my philosophy. People should really understand that everything that goes on the internet with their name, can be easily considered public and non-removable from anyone's eyes, for an unlimited period of time. Writing something on the internet is more effective than throwing thousands of flyers off a plane, and that is not an exception on Facebook. Even if something is shared only with a certain group of people, don't take it granted it's safe. In the case of Facebook it's even worse, since everything you share is now in possession of Facebook. The disgusting side of the coin is that it uses it to track your interests so that it shows the perfect advert to you and makes money from it. If you are even fine with that, do not think the information is still safe, as Facebook has changed many times its privacy regulations at its will. The ironic part, though, is that last year it even made public some private photos of its CEO Mark Zuckerberg. So, if even the founder of Facebook is not safe from it, why would you think you are?

Last month Facebook introduced the Timeline. I've seen thousands of people lamenting. Unfortunately they were lamenting for the change of interface. I hope people did also see what Facebook was trying to do. They are trying to get everything from the user's life, trying to reconstruct the events even before we joined facebook. Smart marketing move as Facebook is trying to convince us to give all of our privacy information, for free, with the clever excuse of "improving our social experience". But the scary part comes from the big part of the young population on facebook, who shares irresponsibly every moment of their life. Facebook has become the new diary, but if in the past diaries had locks, now they are more public than an advert board, and held by an external company.

Facebook is not that evil overall (nothing can get as evil as banks) but it is now entering people life more than it should, especially in youngsters. I think a new branch of education should be formed: internet education. This will surely go against interests of Facebook and many other websites, but it is necessary from protecting ourselves from the chaotic dungeon that has now become the Internet.