Facebook Responds to Users, Yanks New TOS

After vocal protest from users, Facebook has removed language that gave it more control over user content.

Don’t let anyone ever tell you that complaining gets you nowhere. Following an uproar from its user community after altering its terms of service to give Facebook more control over user content, the company has relented and changed the terms back to their original condition.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the change in a post on the Facebook Blog, made late Tuesday night. “Based on this feedback, we have decided to return to our previous terms of use while we resolve the issues that people have raised,” Zuckerberg wrote.

“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.”

Though the terms now read as they did prior to the change earlier this month, Zuckerberg makes it clear that they will be amended again the future, but more carefully. The company is also attempting to give users some say in the terms by creating the Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities group, which offers users a chance to offer their own input.