Facebook – the sleight of hand shillster

I see that Facebook it taking a lot of well deserved flack over it’s recent changes to its Terms Of Service (TOS) to the point that baby faced Zuckerberg had to come down from his ivory tower and try to stem the flow of negative comments about the changes. I won’t bother going into all the finer points of what has changed since many of the bigger voices are chipping in their two cents worth – even down to Perez Hilton calling for a boycott of the service (like that will ever happen).

In the process of all this verbiage flying back and forth people like Kara Swisher chimes in with the following little gem

Here’s the key definition of interactive: “mutually or reciprocally active.”

That means once you send something to others, it is out there in cyberspace forever, never ever to return.

And that goes double on social-networking sites, where–let’s be honest–people egregiously overshare and then get all righteous when it is explained to them that sharing means, um, sharing.

As in: You cannot take it back, if you have shared with 476 of your closest “friends,” your bikini shots from Cabo.

The fact is that the moment you sign up to any of the myriad of social media services you can kiss any concept of personal privacy goodbye. That is the trade off you make with you sign on the dotted line with the devil’s many cool little toys you want to play with. Privacy in this instance a thing of the past.

What bothers me is that no one is up in arms over the fact that once you upload anything to Facebook they own that material regardless of what it is forever. All those photos you upload belongs to Facebook, all those messages passed between ‘friends’ now belongs to Facebook and all you expressed opinions belong to Facebook. It is these facts of ownership that is being overshadowed by the bullshit argument about privacy.

From their TOS – just to refresh your memories

You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service

While we are busy playing the shell game over the so-called privacy issue Facebook has at the same time etched in stone that for time immemorial it owns all the things you upload and it can do anything it wants with it – to which you have no say what so ever. If it wants to use that really cute picture of your granny in any way it seems fit there is nothing you can do about it. If it wants to use something you have said about a product or service there is nothing you can do to stop them – even if they take what you have said out of context.

We can argue until we are blue in the face about this so-called privacy issue but we will never reach any solid conclusion because how we each define what our own personal levels of privacy will affect how we behave; and on the Internet. What isn’t being talked about is who owns what because like a true magician Facebook – and other social media services – our attention is being misdirection by the big bugaboo called privacy.

The reality is that once you enter the gates of Facebook you own nothing – they do even after you delete your account or more permanently – die. That’s some deal with the devil if you ask me.