Facebook has listened.

After the social networking Web site changed its terms of service two weeks ago, Facebook reverted to its old terms of service late Tuesday night, after receiving negative feedback from users about the terminology changes.

Facebook users saw this excerpt from creator Mark Zuckerberg’s blog posted on their home pages today: “Over the past few days, we have received a lot of feedback about the new terms we posted two weeks ago. Because of this response, we have decided to return to our previous
Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.”

Communication professor David Gunkel believes the response to the changes was largely due to the confusing language of the terms.

“The wording in the most recent alteration introduced legalistic terminology” that was somewhat confusing, Gunkel said. “The way it was worded, it looked like you were giving away more than in the past.”

Lindsay Schwegler, a sophomore elementary education major, like many others, was worried about privacy issues after Facebook debuted the new terminology. But Gunkel said Facebook didn’t necessarily introduce anything new, but the wording of the contract was changed.

“You own everything you post, but you license Facebook to use it,” Gunkel said. “Because of the language, technically, the user owns it but also grants Facebook a license for world-wide distribution.” If a Facebook user didn’t give license for world-wide use, he said, nothing on Facebook could be shared.

Gunkel said the social networking site is probably arranging for a legal team to write new terms of service.

Terms of service are important for both the user and the Web site, Gunkel said.
“It lets users know where boundaries exist,” he said. “It protects Facebook because the terms pass along responsibility. It exonerates Facebook as common carriers of information. It’s sort of a two-way street.”

Gunkel said terms of service are “very common.”
“There’s terms of service for everything,” he said, adding that many people sign off on terms of service before even reading them.

Peter Alfano, a junior business management major, and junior English major Jeff Piszczek said they don’t usually read terms of service for products or services.

“For something like (Facebook), I wouldn’t,” Alfano said. “I never pay attention to them for Comcast or ComEd.”

“For your iPod, did you read that?” Piszczek asked Alfano. He responded matter-of-factly, “No.”

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