Facebook's new data policy is as scary as ever

Facebook seems to be following in the footsteps of Google, and has announced changes, much like Google, to its Statements of Rights and Responsibilities. The entire pdf is available for download at this link and is nine pages long.Interestingly Facebook has renamed their Privacy Policy to Data Use Policy, clearly indicating that the social networking site intends to expand advertising avenues, especially as the company is due to go to public with its IPO coming out in April. Analysts have raised concerns over Facebook's revenues in the last couple of months.The Facebook statement reads,

Today, we’re letting you know of some changes we propose for the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, an important document that describes our relationship with users and others who interact with Facebook. Many of the changes are administrative (for instance, replacing references to our “Privacy Policy” with “Data Use Policy”) and others make our practices and policies more clear.

Now while FB might think Data Use Policy is mere administrative change but the word play is interesting and it's quite clear that the site has realised that users are sharing a lot of data such as links, videos and photos via the social networking site, which could be a big boon for advertisers who seek to understand how users interact on the web vis-a-vis the social networking site.[caption id="attachment_248833" align="alignleft" width="380" caption="AP"][/caption]The other significant change is that Facebook is also looking to increase payments via the site and has outlined a bunch of terms for payment on the site. Last month Facebook had said that it could team up with mobile operators on payments, in the hope operators could help it make money from its hundreds of millions of mobile users buying games or music on the social network.Facebook is also keen to take on hate speeches, cyber-bulling, nudity, etc and clearly prohibits users from posting anything that could cause violence. Facebook has recently faced legal complications in India after a court pulled up the site for allowing inflammatory content. It had also faced recent protests from All Assam Chutia Students’ Union (Aacsu) after blocking the accounts of thousands of people with the surname Chutia saying that the social network has confused it with Hindi slang.Facebook has also made some changes to how app developers interact with users and it seems the site wants applications to set out a clear privacy policy and also delete date if a user wants them to do so. The agreement states that

You will have a privacy policy that tells users what user data you are going to use and how you will use, display, share, or transfer that data and you will include your privacy policy URL in the Developer Application.

With regard to advertisers, it is clear that Facebook, has set in a bunch of new rules that might not please all advertisers

We cannot control how people interact withclicks are generated on your ads, and are not responsible for click fraud or other improper actions that affect the cost of running ads. We do, however, have systems that attempt to detect and filter certain suspicious click activity, learn more here but we are not responsible for click fraud, technological issues, or other potentially invalid click activity that may affect the cost of running ads. You can cancel your Order at any time through our online portal, but it may take up to 24 hours before the ad stops running. You are responsible for paying for those all ads that run.

It's clear that Facebook's new statement is a clear move at tackling hate speech, pornography, hacking attacks and to streamline revenues from advertising and other app payments by making the terms and conditions clearer.  It's also obvious that Facebook will collect user data more aggressively than it has done in the past.Consumerist interestingly points out that the deletions are really what should be causing us sleepless nights. Facebook, it seems, can do whatever it wants with our old content even after we delete accounts.Mark Zuckerberg's response to that is unfortunately, an unconvincing - 'Trust us'.