Facebook just can’t seem to get the knack of handling service announcements in a way that doesn’t leave their users in a tizz. Chris Wallis at The Consumerist was the first to take a closer look at Facebook’s new terms of service, alerting readers to changes that allow the social network to archive in perpetuity any content users upload in public (i.e. without any privacy settings enabled), even if they later delete their accounts. As Wallis summed up:

“Make sure you never upload anything you don’t feel comfortable giving away forever, because it’s Facebook’s now.”

Thousands of Facebook users have themselves mobilised to express their dismay, forming several groups to express their concern, prompting Mark Zuckerberg’s response explaining the Facebook philosophy around data rights and retention:

“Our philosophy is that people own their information and control who they share it with. When a person shares information on Facebook, they first need to grant Facebook a license to use that information so that we can show it to the other people they’ve asked us to share it with. Without this license, we couldn’t help people share that information.

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.

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Still, the interesting thing about this change in our terms is that it highlights the importance of these issues and their complexity. People want full ownership and control of their information so they can turn off access to it at any time. At the same time, people also want to be able to bring the information others have shared with them—like email addresses, phone numbers, photos and so on—to other services and grant those services access to those people’s information. These two positions are at odds with each other. There is no system today that enables me to share my email address with you and then simultaneously lets me control who you share it with and also lets you control what services you share it with.”

Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch comments on Zuckerberg’s explanation:

“Zuckerberg is saying, ‘Trust us.’ But it is difficult to trust a company that is stripping users of rights they’ve become accustomed to, even if hardly any of them ever actually asserted those rights in practice. And the principle that you should be able to delete your data from the Facebook service is one that many would argue trumps the good that is done by letting Facebook keep it. If I upload a picture which I later regret uploading, why shouldn’t I be able to erase it from Facebook forever, even if some of my friends have already seen it? And should there be different rules for different media? Most people consider the messages in their inbox to be theirs, even if the sender wishes they’d never sent it? And as this data is shared beyond Facebook across the Web, who controls what becomes even harder to determine.Like Zuckerberg says, it’s complicated.”

Chris O’Brien at Silicon Beat couldn’t understand the fuss, while Kara Swisher at All Things Digital expressed the view that for social networks, this is all par for the course:

” … once you send something to others, it is out there in cyberspace forever, never ever to return.And that goes double on social networking sites, where–let’s be honest–people egregiously overshare and then get all righteous when it is explained to them that sharing means, um, sharing.”

Louis Gray started a Friendfeed conversation around the subject, where a prevailing view is matter-of-fact – if something truly is private, don’t put it online.

Update: For added context, Amanda L. French compares Facebook’s TOS with those of MySpace, Flickr, Picasa, YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Elsewhere on the web:

Steve Rubel points out five digital trends he’ll be watching out for in 2009.

Rob Brown sums up a fast and free-flowing debate about PR and SEO by many of the UK’s leading lights of the industry, facilitated largely through Twitter.

Lance Armstrong has turned to Twitter to try to track down the thieves who made off with his one-of-a-kind bike. Have you seen it, perchance?