Most of us on Facebook have seen posts that are the basic format of “post this message, or this will happen.” The most recent one I have seen is this:
“In response to the new Facebook guidelines I hereby declare that my copyright is attached to all of my personal details, illustrations, comics, paintings, professional photos and videos, etc. (as a result of the Berner Convention).
For commercial use of the above my written consent is needed at all times!
(Anyone reading this can copy this text and paste it on their Facebook Wall. This will place them under protection of copyright laws. By the present communiqué, I notify Facebook that it is strictly forbidden to disclose, copy, distribute, disseminate, or take any other action against me on the basis of this profile and/or its contents. The aforementioned prohibited actions also apply to employees, students, agents and/or any staff under Facebook's direction or control. The content of this profile is private and confidential information. The violation of my privacy is punished by law (UCC 1 1-308-308 1-103 and the Rome Statute)”
This format is actually quite common, and this started before Zuckerman was even in college. Essentially, it is a chain letter. Remember those lovely emails that told you “if you don’t send this to ten people, you don’t love God,” or “send this to ten people and Bill Gates/AOL/Microsoft will give money to senders of this email.” You may have even received similar things via text messages.
Well, I am here to tell you that, the majority of the time, this is not true. You can love God without being guilted into sending an email, or posting an image, Bill Gates is not going to give you his money, and, in the case of the above Facebook post, you cannot get Facebook to do something by posting about it.
The greatest deterrent to false information is a critical thought, followed by follow-through in research. While I will quickly admit, the above post looks formal, legal, important, and even believable, the only way to change what is shared on Facebook, is by changing your account security settings. Facebook, Inc., even made a public statement regarding this specific post:
"As outlined in our terms, the people who use Facebook own all of the content and information they post on Facebook, and they can control how it is shared through their privacy and application settings," Andrew Noyes, a Facebook spokesman, wrote in an email. "Under our terms, you grant Facebook permission to use, distribute, and share the things you post, subject to the terms and applicable privacy settings."
What does this mean to you, the user? Well, this means that yes, they can use your images, after all, you are using their website, which they built, and made free of cost, but ONLY if your privacy settings allow for it. You will, and always will, own your content, but anybody can come along and save a picture to their folder on their desktop, and then re-share at any time they choose. Unfortunately for the user, this means that if you want true privacy, and don’t want things to be shared, you should discontinue using any social media sites. Thankfully, Facebook has given you the option to “toughen up” your privacy settings, but you can never expect true anonymity while using the internet, it just doesn’t work that way.
Does this mean we should feel dumb if we fell for it? No, I think not. I truly believe that in all circumstances there is always the possibility for learning, we just need to be open to it. I don’t look down on anyone for not realizing these posts are fake, I have made my fair share of mistakes, but after reading this, I do expect you to now do a quick search on any posts that look like this. A good site for this is Snopes, but I usually just do a quick general search of a few key words to find my answers.
Of course, you can always feel free to share this with them in hopes of helping them to learn something new as well!
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