Having used Facebook for a long time now to connect with friends I find myself more and more frustrated with it all the time. In fact there are several things that I just do not like about Facebook anymore, and therefore I am seriously considering not using it. Here is why, but perhaps you can persuade me other wise.
Facebook started back in 2004 (5 years ago) originally for college students to connect with each other around campus. Since then it has grown to an online community of millions of users and as such, certainly in my opinion, it is loosing its appeal all the time. Other social or micro blogging platforms, such as Twitter are starting to grow much faster and gain in numbers of users, with good reason.
So why am I starting to fall out with Facebook? Well I suppose the number 1 reason are the moment is that it is just too complicated! It has so many different applications and features, not to mention the adverts etc that when you are checking your news feed there is simply just too much going on in my opinion. I think what I am really interested in reading is friends status messages. I want to connect with friends by using Facebook to find out what they are doing and maybe even to look at photos of friends when they are posted. However I am finding more and more than my news feed ends up full on content that just gets in the way, such as applications, games and quizzes that friends and connections have used. Don’t get me wrong I am not in any way having a go at people for using these items, my problem is with Facebook for not providing a quick and simple way of hiding all these updates, rather than having to hide individual ones.
Reason number 2 would have to be Facebook’s terms and conditions. Firstly the fact that at the moment they seem to be changing all the time. People are never going to know what terms they are bound by if they are revised on a monthly basis. There are also some rather striking parts of the terms that I do not like at all. For example this statement below which talks about the content that you post to Facebook:
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
If that was not bad enough they even state in their terms and conditions that even if you leave Facebook then they still own all the content that you have placed on the site:
The following sections will survive any termination of your use of the Facebook Service: Prohibited Conduct, User Content, Your Privacy Practices, Gift Credits, Ownership; Proprietary Rights, Licenses, Submissions, User Disputes; Complaints, Indemnity, General Disclaimers, Limitation on Liability, Termination and Changes to the Facebook Service, Arbitration, Governing Law; Venue and Jurisdiction and Other
I suppose that my third reasons for falling out with Facebook would lie in the Privacy settings. About a month ago Facebook changed the way privacy settings worked and in fact to their credit they gave the user a little more control of what could and could not be seen by people. However what disappointed me was that to make these changes, all my privacy settings that were set up we reset to default, meaning that much of the content I had protected was no open to anyone. It was fortunate that I checked in the privacy settings one time and saw that everything had changed.
Facebook seem to be more and more dictating what users can do and putting restrictions on things. At least this is what I feel like. It feels like their goal is to get everyones to share all their information with everyone and not allow the user to be in control anymore.
What are your thoughts on Facebook? What about those terms and conditions? Have you every had any problems with Facebook and if so how did you get them resolved? I would love to hear people’s opinions on this one as perhaps it is just me?
