Hey, anyone who knows me will know I’m often the skeptic. When the new FB TOS stuff came out I thought, “people are just over reacting as usual.” Typically, there is a very small minority of very vocal people that try and create all kinds of hysteria around the most mundane things. If you ignore it, it usually just blows over in a few days when the truth comes out.
Although, it hasn’t been that long since the news first broke, I think this time it might be worth some caution, as some very prominent figures have remained out spoken out about this issue which is beginning to worry me.
So here’s what I’m doing. I didn’t use Facebook to host any of my “commercial” style work but I’ve left one example and linked to my portfolio. I have no problem continuing to keep my family, documentary and random camera phone photos there. I still believe the value of sharing these images over whatever commercial value I (or anyone else for that matter) could get from them.
And, I’m certainly not going to the extreme of fleeing Facebook. I understand those that might be doing it “teach them a lesson” and that’s fine. The reality for me is, since I’m not paying to put my photos there, it’s free, so the photos I have on Facebook are fair game. I don’t have the hubris to think that every shot I take is gold.
Update: It seems that Facebook has rescinded the problem parts of their new TOS (their blog link is down right now for some reason). I’ll probably still be wary of what things I post to Facebook though.