A further refinement: there is a difference between (a) language in the terms of service that warns information may remain, just as you left it, on other parts of the site after you remove your own page, and Facebook retains the right to keep those postings in place vs. (b) a blanket retention of all rights.

Finally, I wonder how much of this is related to Facebook’s desire to retain its potentially valuable “digital dossier” (to use a Solove phrase) about a former user’s preferences. That raises completely different questions.

Similarly on a wall, if you write something there, the message remains on the wall, although it loses context if there is no ‘person’ that wrote it anymore.

With a comment in a blog post, I believe that if possible it could be deleted. But if the message is in someway central, or even referenced by others, then the moderator should remove all signs of the person’s name. Make the post anonymous. Make all the other postings refer to “Anonymous’” post instead of “DevinB’s” post. The message is intact, but the person no longer has to be associated with it.

In terms of photos, those should be removed forever. Because they reside within that person’s facebook page. And Facebook shouldn’t be maintaining something that is gone.

The final aspect, of shared information. Such as addresses, phone numbers, etc. Facebook has NO EXCUSE to keep that information. Well, they have excuses, but the information becomes orphaned as soon as the person leaves facebook. If they change their home number, facebook doesn’t know that. So they have no reason to leave the information, because it is fundamentally a reference to an object which is no longer there.

Quick summary.

Messages should stay as they are GIVEN by the person.

Photos should go because they are HOSTED by the person. (Technically hosted by facebook, but that’s not my meaning)

Personal information should go because it is ABOUT the person.

Posted at 02/18/2009 07:00 AM

After a wave of protests from its users, Facebook said it would withdraw changes to its so-called terms of service concerning the data supplied by its users.

What if I send you – in the physical world – a letter and a picture of myself, would I be entitled to get them back if I changed my mind?

What is different in the virtual world of Facebook?

I would say, the ease of access, the scope of diffusion and the lack of knowledge awareness of the users on the rules of game. It is hard to realize how permanent and wide is the exposure of information over SNSs.

Did my friend begged me to send him the letter?

Maybe not. In any case, it took me some time to ‘materialize’ my sending and have a thought about it.

Facebook encourage posting and users don’t always temper their acts. Should this fact entitle them to a right of retraction? Maybe the answer could be yes, at least in some cases. Anyway, who reads the TOU?

Clarinette

We should also consider what seems to be possible and what they’re claiming. For example, users can remove (or at least seem to remove) any post on their own wall or post they made on another’s wall. Do the terms of service allow Facebook to act like it’s removing either of those, but keep a copy stored somewhere anyway?

I think most things on Facebook, other than Wall posts, are conceptually more like shared references rather than transferred control. Regardless of the data structures Facebook uses, what I expect when I post a photo is that people will see my posting, not get copies of the photo. When I remove that photo, I expect it to vanish not only from my page but everyone else’s. And even with Wall posts, if it’s something that looks like I could delete, I’d expect deletion to remove the item, not just hide it.

Very little on Facebook works like e-mail.