The fact is that I'm not sure that people totally believe what they are doing will hold up in a court of law. The thought that it <i>might</i> and it is <i>so easy</i> to do, coupled with the herd mentality (all of their friends are doing it), make posting something like this seem to have no downside, but only upside. After all, wouldn't you hate to be the one rube whose privacy is invaded because you didn't simply post something to your wall? To someone with little understanding of technology and law, it's like Pascal's Wager (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_Wager" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_Wager</a>), right?<p>Of course, my opinion of these friends of mine drops, but what do they care about that? :)
As a citizen of the EU and a country with strong privacy protection, my privacy rights are protected by law, and neither Facebook's terms nor the fact that any other entity can collect certain information from Facebook negates that right.<p>The claims by Snopes are equally false: whatever Facebook terms a user may have accepted whenever, they are trumped by the law. You can't give up your civil rights with single click.
I just posted the following: "I declare that facebook can use any of my stuff for any reason they stipulated in the terms of service I didn't read because I am too lazy. I fully recognize that posting a declaration of the opposite will have no actually effect on anything and that the only way for me to not have my privacy negatively impacted would be to stop using facebook. Unfortunately, this is not going to happen because google+ sucks just as bad and all my friends are on here, so long live network effects!"<p>[EDIT] I probably would have been more accurate to say google+ sucks just as bad with their TOS.
That little thing (sometimes huge thing) people put at the end of their emails that "this is confidential" is also pointless as you cannot enter into a confidentiality agreement that way.
The Snopes article also links to a page on a moonshine distillery website that claims to show you how to get diplomatic immunity: <a href="http://www.coppermoonshinestills.com/id53.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.coppermoonshinestills.com/id53.html</a><p>Well worth reading for kicks, and reads more like a primer on how to make yourself a nuisance to local courts.<p>tl;dr You have to fill out some documents, notarize them, have state and federal judges sign them, and refuse any case you're involved in to be heard by magistrates in lower courts. In this way you'll be put on the "list" for diplomatic immunity although you are (presumably) not a diplomat. They even sell diplomatic corps car tags.<p>The legitimacy of the article is undermined by the fact that the author often spells "you" as "ya".
The terrible thing about this: it's the sign that users have absolutely zero clue about online privacy and facebook terms and conditions.<p>Some of my friends (and not the stupidest ones) posted this and really thought they were safe after that...
Directly from newsroom.fb.com:<p><i>Copyright Meme Spreading on Facebook:</i><p><i>There is a rumor circulating that Facebook is making a change related to ownership of users' information or the content they post to the site. This is false. Anyone who uses Facebook owns and controls the content and information they post, as stated in our terms. They control how that content and information is shared. That is our policy, and it always has been.</i><p><a href="http://newsroom.fb.com/Fact-Check" rel="nofollow">http://newsroom.fb.com/Fact-Check</a>
See also: No Copyright Intended<p><a href="http://waxy.org/2011/12/no_copyright_intended/" rel="nofollow">http://waxy.org/2011/12/no_copyright_intended/</a>
And when one side in a relationship is able to offer take-it-or-leave it terms which may change at any time without notice simply by being published on some arbitrary web page, but the other is not? Does this really meet conditions for a binding contract?
This is the third wave I've seen of this on facebook... at least it's better worded this time.<p>This pretty much proves what many of us knew: the average person has absolutely no idea about copyright or TOS agreements, and what rights they have or are signing away.
What is so disheartening about so many of my facebook contacts sharing this? That it is a simple manifestation of the power of herd mentality. You are talking about mature adults with not just children and property, but with degrees of higher education not adhering to the base principles of reason. If an "educated" person does not bother to verify perceived facts before acting on them, what other imbecile lemming behavior are they capable of? There truly are no innocents.
Random thought: When presented with a TOS to signup, if you could edit that TOS before clicking submit, is this similar to editing a contract before signing it?
And by the way, company x will not donate a dollar to this poor cancer suffering baby for every like the photo gets, Mr mamboto will not transfer 25 trillion dollars to your bank account, and the Microsoft lottery was already won by the early share holders.
I don't know why but every time I see those statuses and chain emails (same thing really) I lose faith in the common sense of humanity...
> Cancel your Facebook account.
> (Note that in the last case, you may have already ceded some rights which you cannot necessarily reclaim by canceling your account.)<p>I forgot about that. :(