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Possible Duplicate:
Is the trending Facebook “privacy notice” necessary and/or effective?

I have noticed several people posts a boilerplate notice on their Facebook wall as fallows:

To Facebook, You are hereby notified that you are strictly prohibited from disclosing, copying, distributing, disseminating, or taking any other action against me with regard to this profile and the contents herein, including, but not limited to my photos, and/or the comments made about my photos or any other "picture" art posted on my profile. The foregoing prohibitions also apply to your employee, agent, stu dent or any personnel under your direction or control. The contents of this profile are private and legally privileged and confidential information, and the violation of my personal privacy is punishable by law.

For those of you who do not understand the reasoning behind this posting, Facebook is now a publicly traded entity. Unless you state otherwise, anyone can infringe on your right to privacy once you post to this site. It is recommended that you and other members post a similar notice as this, or you may copy and paste this version. If you do not post such a statement once, then you are indirectly allowing public use of items such as your photos and the information contained in your status updates. Copy & paste, everyone!

Example: http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=414842091916904&id=247453001989148

Does the claim that Facebook now being a PLC changes the privacy of your profile content, stand up? Or is this just misguided nonsense that people are posting?

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Rincewind42
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No, there’s no change in the policies, neither in data use nor privacy:

Fact Check

Copyright Meme Spreading on Facebook

There is a rumor circulating that Facebook is making a change related to ownership of users' information or the content they post to the site. This is false. Anyone who uses Facebook owns and controls the content and information they post, as stated in our terms. They control how that content and information is shared. That is our policy, and it always has been.

And the email is a scam (and an old one at that) – posting a notice on your wall does exactly nothing:

Facebook users cannot retroactively negate any of the privacy or copyright terms they agreed to when they signed up for their accounts nor can they unilaterally alter or contradict any new privacy or copyright terms instituted by Facebook simply by posting a contrary legal notice on their Facebook walls.

I cannot help remarking that this should be obvious after a short reflection: First off, does anybody actually expect that Facebook scans everbody’s wall for such a disclaimer and keeps note of the contents? Impossible!

And secondly, since when can you unilaterally renegotiate contracts? Some people have wittily remarked that this is equivalent to writing to the tax office explaining that you no longer agree to pay taxes. Good luck with that.

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Konrad Rudolph
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  • pretty much every company unilaterally negotiates contracts with their users – Ryathal Nov 28 '12 at 14:27
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    @Ryathal I said *re*-negotiate. That’s a big difference. Notice that when companies change their terms of service, *you have to agree* to the changes. Of course, disagreement usually results in automatic termination of the service. But the agreement has to be sought nevertheless. – Konrad Rudolph Nov 28 '12 at 14:48
  • "We are *altering* the agreement. Pray we do not alter it any *further*." – Shadur Jun 26 '15 at 11:41
  • @KonradRudolph As to your last paragraph, look up the Sovereign Citizen movement, who do pretty much exactly that... – Shadur Jun 26 '15 at 11:42
  • @Shadur They don’t get away with it though. What they do is illegal, and such actions are prosecuted. – Konrad Rudolph Jun 26 '15 at 12:18