Social networking site Facebook can boast quite a userbase: Over 175 million worldwide, at least according to Wikipedia. And many of those users are understandably worried about a revalation regarding the site’s Terms of Service over the weekend. Here’s the new fine print you agree to when you sign up:

You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.

But that ToS is much different than the old version. The old version also had these lines:

You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.

And the following lines have been added:

The following sections will survive any termination of your use of the Facebook Service: Prohibited Conduct, User Content, Your Privacy Practices, Gift Credits, Ownership; Proprietary Rights, Licenses, Submissions, User Disputes; Complaints, Indemnity, General Disclaimers, Limitation on Liability, Termination and Changes to the Facebook Service, Arbitration, Governing Law; Venue and Jurisdiction and Other.

Basically you could remove your content and their license to use it would expire at that point in the old version. In the new version, on the other hand, their license is still in effect after you delete the material from your account. Facebook can give away your uploaded material forever.

Facebook is trying to soothe user concerns through a series of several statements. Here’s the corporate response:

We are not claiming and have never claimed ownership of material that users upload. The new Terms were clarified to be more consistent with the behavior of the site. That is, if you send a message to another user (or post to their wall, etc…), that content might not be removed by Facebook if you delete your account (but can be deleted by your friend). Furthermore, it is important to note that this license is made subject to the user’s privacy settings. So any limitations that a user puts on display of the relevant content (e.g. To specific friends) are respected by Facebook. Also, the license only allows us to use the info “in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.” Users generally expect and understand this behavior as it has been a common practice for web services since the advent of webmail. For example, if you send a message to a friend on a webmail service, that service will not delete that message from your friend’s inbox if you delete your account.

Apparently your privacy settings remain in effect even after you remove your account (or so the rep says). So keep that in mind as you upload content and fiddle with the settings.

The second statement comes from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on the site’s blog. It basically amounts to “trust us:

One of the questions about our new terms of use is whether Facebook can use this information forever. When a person shares something like a message with a friend, two copies of that information are created—one in the person’s sent messages box and the other in their friend’s inbox. Even if the person deactivates their account, their friend still has a copy of that message. We think this is the right way for Facebook to work, and it is consistent with how other services like email work. One of the reasons we updated our terms was to make this more clear.

In reality, we wouldn’t share your information in a way you wouldn’t want. The trust you place in us as a safe place to share information is the most important part of what makes Facebook work. Our goal is to build great products and to communicate clearly to help people share more information in this trusted environment.

We still have work to do to communicate more clearly about these issues, and our terms are one example of this. Our philosophy that people own their information and control who they share it with has remained constant. A lot of the language in our terms is overly formal and protective of the rights we need to provide this service to you. Over time we will continue to clarify our positions and make the terms simpler.

Pardon me if I’m still a bit hesitant over the fact that their official ToS allow them to technically share your material even after deletion. Which is going to be looked at in a lawsuit: What Zuckerberg promised in a blog entry or what the legal terms actually said? As Consumerist commenters point out, there’s no need for the “overly formal” text if they’re not going to utilize it in the form the text allows them to. Commenter “Plates” notes:

Right up to the point they are sued and the case is thrown out of court because the terms of service made you agree to arbitration.

Right.