Farewell, Facebook

Update, 2/18/09: In response to public outcry, Facebook reverted to its old Terms of Service temporarily. In addition, from their statement:

“We hope you’ll join this group and post comments. We promise to use these comments to help construct a new Terms of Use that reflects the principles around how people share and control their information, and that’s written clearly in language everyone can understand.”

For the record, I’m glad to see this rapid response on Facebook’s part. But the fact that they were capable of such a giant misstep in the first place leaves me reluctant to trust them. My profile is deleted, and I’ll be staying off there for the time being while this story unfolds.

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(My original post, in case you’re interested:)
An update to my earlier post today about Facebook:

After a whole lot on online uproar today, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a response to concerns over its new Terms of Service.

Please do give it a read. My interpretation is that, in essence, Facebook has no plans to change its Terms of Service, Zuckerberg is not apologizing for failing to inform users of the recent changes, and by the way, he promises not to misuse our content.

He states twice in the post that “Our philosophy is that people own their information and control who they share it with.” But, in the face of the TOS language, (not to mention, how poorly they communicate with their users), I don’t feel that I can trust Facebook. I’ve decided to delete my profile there.

To be honest, today’s events were merely the last straw. I’ve never really enjoyed Facebook’s convoluted user interface, its inadequate online help, or the barrage of nonsensical applications that litter up the place. I was there because seemingly everyone else was there. But that isn’t worth handing my original words and images over to people who feel the need to control them. If I see substantial changes in Facebook’s TOS and user interface someday, I’ll consider coming back.

UPDATE: If you want to go deeper into this subject, read this comparison of Facebook’s TOS with those of other online services like Flickr, MySpace, Twitter, etc..

Meanwhile, I’ll still be hanging out on Twitter, where they respect intellectual property. Hope to see you there sometime.