10 Reasons You Should Delete Your Facebook Account
10. Facebooks Terms Of Service Are Invasive And One-Sided
When you sign up to the website, you agree to a whole set of terms and conditions at a length and complexity that would embarrass a credit card provider. We guarantee that 99% of you reading this article havent read the full Facebook Terms Of Service, and the 1% of you that have read them probably dont need to read this article at all (and are probably lawyers, privacy obsessives or both). Facebook claim that these terms and conditions of use are primarily to protect them from casual litigation and to allow them a license to publish your stuff to the internet on your behalf effectively, to make the site actually fit for purpose. They reckon that this kind of small print is increasingly common in this day and age. Where Facebook are different to many of the other sites with similar Terms Of Service, of course, is that theyll use your information to sell you stuff, and will loan your information to advertisers wholl market their wares directly to targeted demographics based on what Facebook users like, and not just on the site itself. In 2014, Facebook like buttons litter the internet. Theyre all over the place as are sites that allow you to log into their services using your Facebook login details. Comments on thousands of news and magazine style websites (including this one) can be activated using your Facebook profile. Couple that with the fact that the young billionaire founder of the company is a man whos had allegations of unethical behaviour made against him since Facebook first appeared on the scene (including one that he stole the idea in the first place, a lawsuit that he settled). Its disquieting, to say the least. Now, the most common argument used against this one is that Facebook is free to use, and that this means that we get to vote with our feet, but with nothing else: that we have no right to demand changes to a free service that we choose to use. Thats fine. Lets do that. After all, we got on just fine without Facebook for years. The company doesnt own us, or our data, no matter what terms and conditions they insist upon.
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
