Facebook now owns your content even if you're gone!

Historically, when a subscriber left Facebook and closed their account on the network, any rights Facebook claimed to the original content you uploaded would no longer be valid. Of course, it seems appropriate that social networking sites handle content in this manner.

However, Facebook recently changed their terms of service in a way that should frighten all of us current users as noted in the following Consumerist article: http://consumerist.com/5150175/facebooks-new-terms-of-service-we-can-do-anything-we-want-with-your-content-forever

They have always had complete control of your uploaded content as per the original terms of service (TOS) - they could even sublicense it if they want. What's new in their TOS is actually a few important lines they've removed - the lines which automatically expire their license over your content when you leave the network. Basically, you should never upload anything to Facebook that you wouldn't want to give away FOREVER.

What frightens me the most about this is what does Facebook ever plan to do with this content (if anything)? They may just be covering themselves because things you upload could reside on servers outside of Facebook's direct control at some point. In general, anything you upload to the internet could be considered public forever... regardless of if you want it that way. Nonetheless, adjusting TOS to formally control rights to photos, videos, etc does mean they could sell the content to marketers if they so chose to do so. This is something that users should all be aware of.