I'm really impressed, I would have expected worse.
1) I did not expect them to respond at all
2) I did not expect them to revert to their previous terms
3) I like it how they communicated that, not too much 'doublespeak' in there
None of these were on my list of 'expected actions', I fully expected them to stonewall and ride out the media storm. I think that their about-face is possibly reflective of the number of cancellations they've seen more than from anything else, but I doubt we'll ever get confirmation of that.
multiple times = very bad strategy. I recall AOL releasing a lot of customer data and not getting too much flak because of how they handled it, I think facebook is walking on thin ice for a while when it comes to how they deal with their users information.
Facebook can lose the grace of the masses in a matter of months. There are many websites ready to fill in.
It's great they reverted the change, but I really doubt this will last for long.
The problem arose because it's a major change with no introduction or explanation, and the TOS had no language to qualify it as such so they were giving themselves carte blanch in terms of limitations on this power.
What they need to do: 1) Carefully construct the legal text to not appear so far reaching and easy to abuse. 2) Warn everyone that change is coming. 3) Implement said change and monitor feedback.
If they ACTUALLY sold your data after you left, that might cause a huge uproar. I don't think they would be dumb enough to do that. Also, how valuable is the data of a user that isnt even there anymore. Yup, I can see advertisers really seeing value in selling a product to a user that doesn't exist anymore. Most likely, the real reason for keeping some of that data, is to keep it as part of the overall data they can mine / use algorithim's with.
Drafting a bill of rights seems like a good move. If anything they should have used this opportunity as a chance to talk with everyone, gather some valuable feedback, and then change the terms of use. Jumping the gun and reverting back just doesn't make sense. Imagine if they did this with the Newsfeed back in 06.
Nothing to see here, move along.
