Sand or Concrete: More on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest’s Terms of Service (TOS)

Photo Credit: Jef Nickerson via Flickr

Updated at the Bottom

Okay, so continuing yesterday’s dissection of various social media platform’s terms of service (TOS), a bunch of questions or comments came up about Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or Pinterest (or really, pick your social media platform — they all have similar TOS) that I’m going to attempt to answer.

Before we begin, I want to preface this by saying I use other social media platforms.  I think they’re wonderful tools of communication.  I just use them with this knowledge in the back of my head, and it colours the decisions I make about what I post.  But I just want that clear: I do post on Twitter, Facebook, et al.

So now let’s talk content since we discussed images and video yesterday.

Go back to the TOS samples I posted yesterday.  You are granting the same rights to your words whenever you post words on those sites.  So that totally amusing, pithy saying you came up with?  They can use that.  The tag line you have for your blog that you also post as the tagline to your Twitter account?  They can use that.  That clever slogan you came up with for Jif peanut butter while you were joking around with your friends?  They have the right to sub-license that slogan to Jif, collect the money for it, and not pass any of that money on to you (royalty free!).

Now, do I believe that this is likely to happen to you?  No, but it could happen to you.  So you just need to know that in order to set your comfort zone.  And again, this is about giving permission.

You still own your content, which means that YOU can also take your pithy statement and slap it on a t-shirt.  It means that by granting them these rights, that you are not losing your rights.  And that’s all well and good.  But you’ve also given any of these sites the right to use your content in that manner as well.  If you are comfortable with that possibility (and I am often comfortable with that possibility in the same way that I am often comfortable posting pictures of myself but not others), you should post that content.  If you are not comfortable with that possibility, you should post it elsewhere or not post it at all.

Which brings us to two different topics that meet at a central point: protecting your content.

If you read those TOS (and the TOS of pretty much any social media site), they have the right to close your account without warning.  Unlike a self-hosted blog that you pay for, free sites are allowed to wipe away your work.  Therefore, if you care about that content a lot, I would keep a copy.  It’s easiest on Twitter: just use a service such as All My Tweets to see them on one page, and then cut-and-paste a copy onto a Word doc.  Simple.  It’s also pretty easy on Facebook.  You can follow their instructions on downloading your content.  I am less familiar with how to do this on other sites, or whether the possibility exists.  When I post on sites other than my own, I always save a copy of my post as a Word doc.  I would lose the comments and such if they chose to delete my work, but at least I would have my thoughts.

The other side of protecting your content is investing yourself in sites that are under your control.  It doesn’t fit my personality nor my preferences on the Internet to invest a lot of energy into building huge followings on Twitter.  Twitter is lovely, but it’s also outside of my control.  They can decide tomorrow to erase my account and all of my followers are gone.  Same with Facebook.  Which freaks me out a little bit.

The same goes for free Blogger and WordPress accounts.  I think most people should start with a free account to see if they enjoy blogging.  But once they’ve determined that they do enjoy blogging and they plan to keep going with it indefinitely, they should switch to a self-hosted account if they can afford to do so.  Again, this only matters if you feel strongly about your content.  Some people look at their blog as they do a sandcastle — something fun to build or beautiful in the moment, but if it washes away, they’re okay with that too.  Other people look at their blog as something more akin to a concrete statue and they want a promise that it will be there in the future.  Self-hosting does that.

In between are the people who don’t need it to be concrete but would be sad if it washed away, and those people should simply do a poor man’s blog backup continuously — you will always have your content, but you can release your fears of losing your space.  Because the possibility of losing your space is built into the TOS as well.

There is two things we’re talking about here: (1) permanence and (2) rights.  The permanence part is clear: if you self-host, you control your space.  As long as you continue to pay for it and you don’t trespass on your host’s TOS, you have your space.  The same is not true for free WordPress or Blogger sites nor for Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or Pinterest accounts.  You own the content, meaning, you hold the rights to it.  If you want to publish it in a book, you can.  If you want to create photocopies of it, you can.  But THEY own the site, the space online.  And they graciously give it to you for free.

So I think the important thing to think about is whether you are more of a sandcastle person or a concrete sculpture person, or do you fall somewhere in between where you neither need the permanence of concrete but you don’t love the impermanence of sand?  And in knowing that about yourself, are you making choices on the Internet that fit your preferences?

I know that I lean much more heavily towards concrete than sand — the numerous boxes in my storage room saving artifacts from childhood are a case in point — so self-hosting not only makes sense, but it is the best choice for me once I look at the TOS of various free blogging platforms.  I put my greatest efforts into my blog, and less of an effort into other social media platforms just because I like the amount of control and permanence the blog affords me.  It’s also about ownership: I like to own the words I like.  Which is to say that I also don’t mind placing my words elsewhere (comments, other social media platforms, even guest blogging), but I am picky about which words I give to others and which ones I keep for myself in terms of giving away the rights of usage.  I don’t expect other social media platforms will use my words, but I also don’t want to give them permission to do so.

Are you more of a sand person, a concrete person, or — like me — do you fall somewhere in between while leaning more towards one end than the other?  And more importantly, do your choices online reflect those preferences right now?

Photo Credit: Hendricks Photos via Flickr.

Updated:

If people are interested, I can write up a tutorial on how to move to self-hosting.  It’s not that difficult to do.  I sort of see it as an insurance policy for my blog rather than the ability to utilize all the cool things self-hosting includes (such as hosting sound files or video).