By Amy McDougall, SpinSpotter Community Manager
Ah, the power of user feedback.
In his latest blog post, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced his decision to revert to the company’s old Terms of Service policy after listening to countless users express opposition to his changes yesterday.
That’s not to say he won’t unveil a new TOS version again soon, but with Facebook’s new Bill of Rights and Responsibilities in place, users can now offer their two cents on policy revisions that impact how Facebook handles personal information.
One of the main user concerns that rose to the surface yesterday was that the all-too general wording in the new TOS made it seem like Facebook could justify sharing personal content in ways that would violate user privacy.
I’m pleased to know that our SpinSpotter community wasted no time in speaking their minds on this issue. From user devlo de-spinning Zuckerberg’s statement that Facebook’s policy “is consistent with other services,” to user prepare_for_y2k exposing CNET’s minimization of user concerns as being as nothing more than “hysteria,” SpinSpotters took action by jumping right in. Well done.
Does this call for a larger effort to dissect and de-spin privacy policies of other services we trust with our personal information? Which company policies would you like to see de-spun? Twitter? MySpace? LinkedIn?
