Some time ago Facebook decided that should they be notified of a user's passing, instead of deleting their profile like other social network sites, they would convert it to a 'memorial page' which was only available to confirmed friends allowing them to post memories and condolences on their profile. On the surface perhaps that seems like a kind act on Facebook's part. But it seems that even if the bereaved family asks Facebook to take the profile down they just don't. From an ethics standpoint sadly it's starting to become clear that Facebook just has none. From a business standpoint what their doing is taking advantage of the spike in hits to the deceased's profile to boost ad revenue, and finally taking the profile down 4 weeks after the last post when the cost of hosting the profile is more than the ad revenue being generated. Facebook believes they have the right to leach off their users, to own and exploit their identity, even after death. It's not just that they're exploiting the grief of it's users, it's that they're ignoring the grief of family members and facilitating in the possible damaging and tainting of the memory of that person. The Consumerist posted a letter sent to them by Stephanie Bemister who told her story and how Facebook's greed is affecting her family.

Dear Ben, It is great that organizations such as yours have such an impact for consumers. Please accept my heartfelt thanks for all you do. I have a problem which has not been mentioned so far and I have to say I am heartbroken, angry and am lost for words. My brother, William Bemister, died very suddenly mid November. He lived in Oxford, England. I went to the UK to hold a service for my brother who was divorced and lived on his own. However, if anyone believed he was just another single, and lonely middle-aged man with no friends or family to speak of, this was far from the truth. He was a successful Nazi hunter, Emmy award winning investigative journalist with thousands of contacts all over the world. He was about to start filming his next documentary, 'Admissible Evidence.' He had a Facebook page. The day before he died he promised me he would accept me on his friends list. We spoke on the phone two, three times a week. And were very close even though thousands of miles apart. Also on his friends list were my two daughters, his nieces. He only knew, personally, three other women, the rest of his friends were strangers he met through Facebook Oxford links. The dilemma I had was that he had posted a lot of personal information such as phone number, company website, email address. If you have ever lost someone you will appreciate that when someone dies you need to have this information removed quickly for several reasons: for security purposes, to stop strangers incessantly phoning and emailing the deceased and the worst of all, the sheer grief of dealing with hundreds of people who believe he is still alive and need to be informed of his death. It just made sense to remove his membership. I emailed their 'privacy' division, attached a copy of his death certificate and asked them politely to remove his membership. Facebook refused with the following comment: "Per our policy for deceased users, we have memorialized this person's account. This removes certain more sensitive information and sets privacy so that only confirmed friends can see the profile or find the person in search. The Wall remains so that friends and family can leave posts in remembrance." Facebook is the only group social site that has refused to remove his membership. I am sickened by them. My two daughters are heartbroken as his face still remains on their own member's page. They will not delete him off their own pages or we will never know when or how his site will be deleted. There are strangers in his membership list who can write whatever they wish on his Wall and I, his next of kin and sister, cannot even view his page. It is horrible. How can Facebook be so insensitive to the wishes of a deceased member's family? I have never in my life felt so betrayed, angry and sickened. What do they think they are doing? What if a teen dies for example. Parents are rarely invited onto their child's friends' list. Can you imagine what a parent would feel if they received such an inexplicable email from this company? I have spoken to a number of advocate groups. They all say the same thing. They have never heard of such a thing, think it's disgraceful and suggest I would probably have more luck writing to Mark Zuckerberg a personal letter. If this issue is not common now, it will become a serious problem in the future as Internet users find that they have no rights over deceased family members. Please help. Sincerely, Stephanie Bemister Seattle, WA via The Consumerist, Click here to read the full post by Ben Popken...

So the last few days I've written about Facebook. After leaving Facebook, I remembered that I still had a MySpace account and figured I may as well delete it too while I'm at it. Before I did I looked around a bit and was shocked to see how MySpace had changed over the years. It's very similar to Facebook. Privacy controls, apps you can add to your profile, status updates/news feeds, find and recommend friends based on other friends. I think the only differences between MySpace and Facebook right now is that MySpace profiles can be made to look unique and there are specific profile archetypes for people/musicians/comedians/artists, etc. and their ToS and account deletion process. MySpace takes a couple days to "process your account deletion" so they can remove all your content from their system as apposed to Facebook which wants to perpetually hold on to anything you upload forever. Like Facebook you get presented with the same awkward forms and so on to try understand why you're deleting your account. They're implemented differently, although both use Javascript effects to present you with custom reasons to stay as you fill out the form, MySpace uses a lightbox effect, and Facebook uses an innerHTML/expanding box approach. Also of note to me and other dyslexics is the confirmation process. Facebook shows you a captcha to make sure you're not a robot, but MySpace sends you a confirmation email to make sure you're you, screening for robots and people that may have hacked into your account. Both MySpace and Facebook are moving towards a pay to promote business model. A few user generations from now where more privacy conscious people find MySpaces privacy settings, and more people join Facebook just to promote themselves and add as many friends as possible the two will be indistinguishable. I thought since I'm on the subject I'd have a look at some other social networking sites, specifically the generic ones that try to do it all. The Facebooks and MySpaces if you will. But this post is already pretty long so I'll just leave you with some social network stupidity I've encountered over the last few days. I'd been using Facebook as a contact database to keep track of everyone's email addresses and phone numbers, so before deleting my account I went through and copied the latest stuff into my phone. In searching for a particular friend the top search result was my own profile and noticed that they added a note to this paradoxical result, "Note: You can always find and click on your own profile in Search." Now why on earth would that ever be necessary. Equally disturbing, if you examine the screencap below is that Facebook lets you Message yourself. Facebook doesn't let you delete a group. Instead you have to make it secret, and then kick each member out of the group one by one. Not only is this ridiculous, but the whole premise of a secret group on a social networking web site seems odd to me. Now moving onto MySpace are people a) stupid enough not to understand that MySpace's scope of control doesn't stretch beyond the MySpace.com domain. b) unaware or new to the concept of phishing.. c) really contacting MySpace and blaming them after falling for a phising scam, and d) still not using a decent browser that alerts you when you're on a phishing site. It's my estimation that either all of the above is true giving a lot of weight to the theory of eugenics(to weed out these rediculously lost and confused people), or that MySpace is engaging in fear tactics to keep you on their site a bit longer by presenting you with what's essentially a page full of links back to ad-supported pages within MySpace.

I just ended my relationship with Facebook. Here's what that looked like: (click the images for a bigger legible version) They say goodbye by showing you pictures of some of your friends telling them how much they'll miss you. (I didn't post the images, obviously). Then they provide you with a complaint box: For those of you with a screen reader I checked 'Other', and explained further:

You made drastic changes to your Terms of Use (A legal contract between you and I) without telling me. Even though in most countries that very act voids the contract, you attempted to compromised my identity, and take the rights to my content. Now you're pretending as though you didn't mean what you said. It's a shame that you have this incredible networking app, but can't find a way to be profitable without sacrificing your ethics. You broke my heart Facebook. You broke my heart.

And then on top of everything I had to struggle to dyslexically interpret a Captcha.. One of those things where you have to guess the letters to prove you're a human. Like trying to find the right key to the lock when I'm stuck in a trunk at the bottom of a swimming pool.

I logged in to see if they'd changed their Terms of Use back so I can delete my account and saw this. Mark Zuckerberg the creator of Facebook posted a couple posts on the Facebook Blog.

A couple of weeks ago, we updated our terms of use to clarify a few points for our users. A number of people have raised questions about our changes, so I'd like to address those here. I'll also take the opportunity to explain how we think about people's information. Our philosophy is that people own their information and control who they share it with. When a person shares information on Facebook, they first need to grant Facebook a license to use that information so that we can show it to the other people they've asked us to share it with. Without this license, we couldn't help people share that information. One of the questions about our new terms of use is whether Facebook can use this information forever. When a person shares something like a message with a friend, two copies of that information are created—one in the person's sent messages box and the other in their friend's inbox. Even if the person deactivates their account, their friend still has a copy of that message. We think this is the right way for Facebook to work, and it is consistent with how other services like email work. One of the reasons we updated our terms was to make this more clear. In reality, we wouldn't share your information in a way you wouldn't want. The trust you place in us as a safe place to share information is the most important part of what makes Facebook work. Our goal is to build great products and to communicate clearly to help people share more information in this trusted environment. We still have work to do to communicate more clearly about these issues, and our terms are one example of this. Our philosophy that people own their information and control who they share it with has remained constant. A lot of the language in our terms is overly formal and protective of the rights we need to provide this service to you. Over time we will continue to clarify our positions and make the terms simpler. Still, the interesting thing about this change in our terms is that it highlights the importance of these issues and their complexity. People want full ownership and control of their information so they can turn off access to it at any time. At the same time, people also want to be able to bring the information others have shared with them—like email addresses, phone numbers, photos and so on—to other services and grant those services access to those people's information. These two positions are at odds with each other. There is no system today that enables me to share my email address with you and then simultaneously lets me control who you share it with and also lets you control what services you share it with. We're at an interesting point in the development of the open online world where these issues are being worked out. It's difficult terrain to navigate and we're going to make some missteps, but as the leading service for sharing information we take these issues and our responsibility to help resolve them very seriously. This is a big focus for us this year, and I'll post some more thoughts on openness and these other issues soon.

and a few hours ago... a very similar post.

A couple of weeks ago, we revised our terms of use hoping to clarify some parts for our users. Over the past couple of days, we received a lot of questions and comments about the changes and what they mean for people and their information. Based on this feedback, we have decided to return to our previous terms of use while we resolve the issues that people have raised. Many of us at Facebook spent most of today discussing how best to move forward. One approach would have been to quickly amend the new terms with new language to clarify our positions further. Another approach was simply to revert to our old terms while we begin working on our next version. As we thought through this, we reached out to respected organizations to get their input. Going forward, we've decided to take a new approach towards developing our terms. We concluded that returning to our previous terms was the right thing for now. As I said yesterday, we think that a lot of the language in our terms is overly formal and protective so we don't plan to leave it there for long. More than 175 million people use Facebook. If it were a country, it would be the sixth most populated country in the world. Our terms aren't just a document that protect our rights; it's the governing document for how the service is used by everyone across the world. Given its importance, we need to make sure the terms reflect the principles and values of the people using the service. Our next version will be a substantial revision from where we are now. It will reflect the principles I described yesterday around how people share and control their information, and it will be written clearly in language everyone can understand. Since this will be the governing document that we'll all live by, Facebook users will have a lot of input in crafting these terms. You have my commitment that we'll do all of these things, but in order to do them right it will take a little bit of time. We expect to complete this in the next few weeks. In the meantime, we've changed the terms back to what existed before the February 4th change, which was what most people asked us for and was the recommendation of the outside experts we consulted. If you'd like to get involved in crafting our new terms, you can start posting your questions, comments and requests in the group we've created—Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities. I'm looking forward to reading your input.

They created a Facebook group titled:  Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities, which is full of people complaining about and not understanding the issue. And they returned to their old Terms of Service, which Defending Scoundrels has previously dissected in detail http://defendingscoundrels.com/2007/10/dissecting-the-facebook-terms.html. The part in the old terms that I was waiting for is as follows:

You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content. Facebook does not assert any ownership over your User Content; rather, as between us and you, subject to the rights granted to us in these Terms, you retain full ownership of all of your User Content and any intellectual property rights or other proprietary rights associated with your User Content.

This means that as long as they don't update the terms before I delete my account, to say something like, "We own everything you've ever uploaded, and by logging in, even if only to delete your account you agree," I should be safe. Also of note, the part of the removed Terms that said "Facebook can use your identity for whatever it wants, forever" is back to merely saying, "Facebook can use your content until you remove it". The key here is identity vs. content, what they can do with it, and the permanence of how they do it. Here's that excerpt:

When you post User Content to the Site, you authorize and direct us to make such copies thereof as we deem necessary in order to facilitate the posting and storage of the User Content on the Site. By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.

I developed a Facebook app, which has  a few hundred users. It's actually just a port of the Keith and The Girl Widget that another fan of the show created. He hasn't gotten back to me yet, but I have to add someone else as the developer/admin of the app before I delete my account or I think it'll just be locked or deleted or something. Hopefully while I sort that out Facebook won't try steal my soul again.

Myspace lost its credibility for a number of reasons. The final nail in the coffin, at least for me, was when they changed their Terms of Service so they they owned the music and all other content including blog posts and images you upload to the site. Facebook updated their Terms of Service on February 4th. They did it without notifying its users. They added a clause where by continuing to use the Facebook service after the terms were updated I, and everyone else, became binded by those terms. They removed a clause where deleting your account ceases their rights to your content.

It's not just an issue of Facebook now being able to use the content I did put up, but Facebook can now create or edit my content and claim I did it. It's about the possibility of Identity theft, defamation of character, etc. and an issue of the slick way they got their users to 'agree' to the terms. Facebook—long heralded as the anti-myspace, the good guys, now has the credibility of a second hand timeshare salesman.

The following is an excerpt from Facebook's ToS:

Licenses You are solely responsible for the User Content that you Post on or through the Facebook Service. You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof. You represent and warrant that you have all rights and permissions to grant the foregoing licenses.

The following is Q&A for you who don't speak lawfirm:

What does that mean Yoav? Why is it so bad?

Facebook wants "irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license(with the right to sublicense)" to do stuff with my stuff.

What do you expect, they obviously need to have certain rights with your content otherwise they wouldn't be able to even display it on the site and it would be unusable, right?

a) Facebook's rights to my content should definitely be revokable, and they used to be.

b) Facebook should have notified its users of such a drastic change in their ToS instead of being shady.

c) Facebook does not need rights to "publically perform or display", "scan", "frame", "create derivative works and distribute(through multiple teers)" my content, that's ridiculous.

What else are these bastards trying to get away with?

They want all of these rights to apply, not just to everything you've ever put on Facebook, but to anything anywhere in the world that talks about or alludes to Facebook. This may be a typo, the word 'connection' can be interpreted multiple ways, it's still fucked up. It's most likely a reference to "Facebook Connect" which lets you login to other 3rd party sites using your Facebook credentials.

They want to be able to use my "name, likeness and image for any purpose," in other words they want to be able to call CNN and tell them that "Yoav Givati loves facebook", or "Yoav Givati married a giraffe and flew to Mexico for the honeymoon after stuffing his face with wedding cake" and I can't do anything legally to stop them. They can even put me in a commercial without compensating me, speak for me in public, commit crimes in my name, sell and perform any art or content I've uploaded in the past, and other unspeakable thing that I, as a not evil internet company, cannot imagine.

But Yoav, I'm sure once they see everyone's reaction to this they'll change it to something more acceptable.. right?

No, Facebook's big revenue idea(after years of not being profitable) is to use people's image to sell products to each other. like "Yoav went to so and so amusement park yesterday! he loved it, click here to buy tickets" This used to be an opt in feature, but no one opted in, and it used to be based on fact, like say if I had actually gone to an amusement park, now it doesn't have to be.

What to do now?

It would be stupid to just delete my account now when there's a chance they'll reconstitute their ToS to include a clause that severs their complete and unlimited ownership and carte blanche of my content and identity upon account deletion. If I just delete my account now I'd be doing so with the current terms, which I do not accept. I've taken down all my content except my email address, and I've deleted all my posts and groups(except yoav's pinky finger which I'm not an administrator of since I landed on that island with my coconut radio I made.) Facebook does still claim to have copies of everything archived and still has the right to use those copies as described above. I removed my content merely to show my distaste for the road Facebook as gone down and to make it clear to my friends that I don't use Facebook anymore, and won't.