Tech Stuff: Facebook

I'm sure you all know what Facebook is. In fact, I get upwards of ninety percent of my traffic from Facebook, as I put up all my blog posts there so my friends can review them. It has an estimated one billion active users as of October 2012. In short, if you are on the Internet, you at least know what Facebook is.

Contrary to what this part of the week is usually like, I am not going to talk about Facebook's functionality or uses in any way. Instead, I'm going to discuss a bit of what I think about the recent scare about Facebook moving away from user input when it comes to its terms and services and all that other jazz.

So, what was Facebook like up till recently? Well, unbeknownst to the vast majority of users, up until now Facebook has had a voting procedure in place whereby users could attempt to veto changes to Facebook's guiding documents, such as it's terms and services and other binding contracts between Facebook and its users.

More importantly, this allowed users to vote on how Facebook was allowed to use the data generated by Facebook users via the Facebook platform.

This is where the recent scare comes in - many people are of the belief that Facebook will attempt to gain more control over user-generated content, and that this reduces the benefit they receive by using Facebook.

I don't think this is going to happen and, even if it did happen, it is my belief that the vast majority of users simply wouldn't care. Let's look at each problem, starting with the second.

As it stands, Facebook does now automatically own the rights of everything you put on Facebook. However, let's imagine a world where they do. Would anything change for the average Facebook user?

In my opinion, it would not. Pictures uploaded to Facebook usually have little to no actual value, and the value that they do represent - if any - is sentimental, not commercial.

The one exception comes from people who post professionally taken photos in an attempt to share them with others, often with the intent of using these photos as a form of advertising. These people would want to remove all of these photos from Facebook, and refrain from posting any more.

A similar situation arises with writing. The vast majority of the text generated by users on Facebook is for public consumption. You do not intend to make money with your status updates, so why does it matter if Facebook gains control of the commercial rights for those words?

Again, the exception comes from people who might post complete poems or short stories on Facebook. These people would also want to remove any important content they may have posted and refrain from putting any more of it up on facebook.

The plus here is that the two fringe cases would have ample opportunity to perform the actions required to allow them to not lose out in this situation. This is because Facebook is legally required to inform users about changes to the terms and services agreement well in advance of the changes actually taking place, and these changes cannot change the terms and services associated with past services rendered.

In normal English, this means they would be allowed to remove any commercially important photos or text before that content fell into the hands of Facebook. As such, they would not lose out.

Now for the other concern - would this ever really happen? Again, in my opinion, it would not.

Facebook has little to gain from gaining control over all the user-generated content on Facebook. They make  almost all of their money through advertising, and all of the important data for that industry is already available to them through the current terms and services agreement. Considering the current scare going around as a result of something that hasn't happened yet - and probably isn't going to - Facebook certainly realizes that, at least for the moment, making any change at all will probably have a negative impact on their user base - something that they do care about.

To be honest, it's kind of scary what sorts of information can be pulled from your account if even minimal access is granted. Using the Facebook API, I can remotely pull not only all of your information, but all of the information of every friend you have, as well as the information of any individual who has interacted with any content generated by you.

The only exception, paltry that it is, is that I cannot get access to your email address through the API.

So, folks, if you want to be scared, the time to be scared has already passed. Facebook already has access to all the information about you that they are interested in, and can do with it more or less as they please. Stop being scared about potential changes, and start being scared about what they can already do.

Anyways. Hopefully this will generate some discussion. You are all welcome to leave whatever comments you so desire in the appropriate section below, and I hope at least some of you learned something today. And now its back to generating Bitcoin for me.