Rant of the Day - F***Book

Frigging Facebook!

Who do they think they are, huh?

First of all, they try to act all sneaky and change their ToS (Terms of Service) -
to cut a long story short, they removed a clause from their ToS which allowed users to withdraw the license it had granted to them over user information by deleting information. So under the new, proposed ToS, FBook would still have rights over DELETED INFORMATION for all perpetuity.

Here's a section describing this act of malfeasance in some detail (a thorough summary can be found here - http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2009/02/17/the-facebook-tos-controversy/)

QUOTE: Facebook, in its TOS, gives itself “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” the work. It is a very wide swath of rights that many would be right to worry about giving away perpetually.

Previously, one had been able to “expire” the license by simply removing the content. With the change, that element of the license is gone, making it unclear how one would prevent Facebook from legally using the work of its users in a way that they didn’t intend. UNQUOTE

Anyway, Zuckerberg and co. have, for long, flirted with trouble - remember the allegations which were quietly settled outta court which focussed on the fact that his Harvard classmates gave him an application to develop and he ran away and started his own venture with the said idea....

I also find it really, REALLY annoying when I am invited to join various stupidass activities on Facebook and when I decide to take a look, i.e. dip my feet in the water, the activity application INSISTS on being given access to my PERSONAL information. Like I would agree! Go figure. Silly twits.

Done ranting for today - expending all my phlegmatic emotions in one sustained outburst. Damn Fbook! Damn social networking! The world was a better place without 'em! Down with Fbook! Whatever happened to conventional networking? The kind where REAL MEN sit around a bar, nursing a REAL drink (read, beer) and holding a REAL conversation (read, about women - if you'd narrow it down further, this conversation rarely went beyond tits and ass...okay, legs maybe).

Thats my take on all things which have the tag - 'internet social network' attached to them.

Now I'm off to check out Twitter - on which there will be a subsequent rant of some sort, you can be sure.

oRiOn