Los Angeles — Popular social networking outfit Facebook, which has witnessed an increasing number of complaints about its privacy policy and the way it handles user data even as it becomes more popular, last week unveiled changes to its new terms of service, tweaking earlier drafts in an apparent effort to ease users’ concerns about privacy and how their information is used.
The social media giant has tossed out a change to its terms that users complained could be used as an excuse for censorship, and reopened the consultation into the other changes to those terms in an effort to address various privacy concerns.
After opening up the “Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (SRR)” portion of their terms of service to comments, thousands of users sent in responses to the proposed revisions, during a brief consultation period that Facebook silently ran in March. The social-networking outfit said late last week that it would re-open the consultation for the next week, and that it had already altered some proposed changes due on the reaction they received. This one ends at 5:00 PM PDT on April 27, 2012.
Explaining the move the company stated, “Based on your feedback during the recent comment period for our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (SRR), we have decided to revise some proposed changes and further explain many others. We are also re-opening our comment period,” Facebook said on its site governance page, the only place it now notifies users of changes to its terms.
Here is what Facebook responded about this update, in a post titled STATEMENT OF RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES UPDATE:
Thank you for taking the time to read and give feedback on the proposed changes to our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (SRR). Since 2009 the social network has adopted a unique approach with its “Statements of Rights and Responsibilities (SRR)”, which is what it calls its terms of service.
Unlike other Internet companies, before imposing any new policies, we propose updates to our SRR and give our users an opportunity to comment and ask questions within specified time period. Your insights and perspectives are really valuable to us, enabling us to respond to your questions and make substantive changes to address your concerns before changes are implemented.
Today we are releasing revised changes to the SRR that would reveal changes based on your comments. Even where we did not make revisions, we want to keep you informed with an explanation of the original change. In fact, many of your comments asked for explanations rather than for changes.
We are once again opening up our comment period effective today so that you will have a privilege to post comments about our new proposed changes. Substantive and relevant comments about specific changes can help us determine whether to incorporate or reconsider a particular proposal or whether a vote is needed.
Interesting, The Joy of Tech had the entire Facebook/privacy back-and-forth nailed back in 2008:
Moreover, Facebook described the revisions in a separate document. The huge change was the deletion of a new term that stated: “Some or all of Facebook’s services and features may not be available to users in certain geographic areas. We reserve the right to exclude or limit the provision of any service or feature in our sole discretion.”
The company also mentioned that users had asked whether this meant Facebook could in future decide to censor the activities on the network by activists or other users.
“After reviewing your comments to this proposed language, we decided that the additional provision we proposed was open to misinterpretation,” Facebook said.
In addition, “The recommended revision was intended to cover circumstances that may prevent us from providing our services. For instance, the Internet may go down, certain features may not be available in some locations, or a regime may block our service in their country.”
“We hope you find these responses helpful, and hope that we have covered your concerns in the responses and our revisions,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement. “Your trust is extremely valuable to us. Remember that, as always, you can receive notice of any future changes to our SRR by liking our Site Governance Page.”
Moving forward, if you wish to comment on the latest changes, choosed your language: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Japanese, Turkish, Korean, and Portuguese. So far, most of the comments are just complaints about Timeline.
Facebook users can comment on the latest round of proposed changes until April 27, the post said.