Due to widespread outrage, Facebook has backed down from the new Terms of Service that would have made any and all user-uploaded content the property of Facebook in perpetuity.
By my accounting, this is the third time that Facebook has unceremoniously dumped a controversial change into users' laps with no fore-warning: first there was the Mini-Feed in 2006, and then Beacon in 2007.*
Responding to the current controversy, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg invited users to get involved in making a new Terms of Service, saying: "I'm looking forward to reading your input."
You think? For a company whose entire raison d'etre is to connect people with one another, Facebook is profoundly clueless about communicating with its user base.
*There was also a fair amount of crying over the 2008 user interface changes but I'm not counting that one because a certain proportion of users can always be relied upon to oppose any UI tweak.
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