Facebookies were justifiably upset about the new Terms of Service which gave Facebook, the company, rights to user content forever – as in after you deactivate an account or get deactivated yourself as in die (have you ever thought about what you leaving behind in the digital world? That’s for another time).

One of the best overviews on the matter was at TheConsumerist.com which pointed out that the TOS was changed by the deletion of a provision that you could remove your content and Facebook’s right to it would expire.

There’s many important points here. Let’s Face(book) it, we check off  TOS’s everyday without reading them. They only get in the way of downloading something and are meaningless until there is a rare dispute. There’s not enough time in the day to read much less understand all the TOS’s and legal junk we get in the mail. We’re bombarded with this stuff and to some extent, it’s paralyzed our society. I find legal language offensive in that it’s 1) Incomprehensible , and 2)  Designed to intimidate. The fix is always in.

The best remedy if Facebook persists in demanding the rights to everything forever is to use something else. Don’t get me wrong: I love Facebook. It has been an indispensable tool for me in maintaining a professional network.  I’ve also heard my colleagues, many of whom make their livings in the tech world, start to say Facebook is not cool and they’d like to use it less. I am not a snob: I will use for as long it serves me and I see no end to that for now. But some of these folks have a pretty good sense when a sea change is afoot and that something could be coming along that could supplant  Facebook.

While Facebook goes back to the old TOS, it’s premature to say users won the war. In his blog post on the matter

Facebook founder Mark  Zuckerberg said the issue is still being resolved and promises a revision in coming weeks. While he says he found the TOS language too formal, hence hard to understand by anyone but lawyers, one should know it will be written to protect and advance the interests of Facebook, not necessarily its users. At some junctures, those will be at odds and at others, benign.

In an earlier post before returning to the old TOS, he explained the issues are complex because every message has two copies: what the sender sent and what recipient received. If the sender de-activates his or her account, whatever was received remains with the active Facebook user. That, says the TOS, should endure on Facebook.  But it’s a lot more complex than that. My Facebook account has a lot that I never sent to anyone. Or I don’t think I did.

One good point Zuckerburg makes is that the idea that one can completely control or turn off access to information they have put on the Internet is probably lost. Even if you could, there’s no way to assure that has happened. How often have you deleted e-mail and wondered if it really was gone from every server or eyeball on the planet? The digital world is a complex place.

BTW, Facebook is growing incredibly fast. Just a few weeks ago, Facebook announced that it has 150 million users. Zuckerberg said in his recent post on the TOS that it has 175 million people using the service, which would make it the sixth most populous nation in the world. Indeed, wikipedia confirms this, wedging Facebook in between number five Brazil and number six Pakistan.