By Anna Benckert, VP and Associate General Counsel
People should have clear, simple explanations of how online services work and use personal information. Today we’re announcing updates to our Terms of Service to clarify how Facebook makes money and better explain the rights people have when using our services. The updates do not change any of our commitments or policies — they solely explain things more clearly.
Several of the updates are the result of our work with the European Consumer Protection Cooperation Network. Others are based on input from ongoing conversations with regulators, policymakers and consumer protection experts around the world.
They are also part of our ongoing commitment to give people more transparency and control over their information. For example, earlier this year we introduced updates to “Why am I seeing this ad?” and we launched “Why am I seeing this post?” to help people understand and control what they see in News Feed.
Here’s a summary of the information we’ve added to our terms:
- How we make money: We include more details on how we make money, including a new introduction explaining that we don’t charge you money to use our products because businesses and organizations pay us to show you ads.
- Content removals: We provide more information about what happens when we remove content that violates our terms or policies.
- Your intellectual property rights: We clarify that when you share your own content — like photos and videos — you continue to own the intellectual property rights in that content. You grant us permission to do things like display that content, and that permission ends when the content is deleted from Facebook. This is how many online services work and has always been the case on Facebook.
- What happens when you delete: We’re providing more detail about what happens when you delete content you’ve shared. For example, when you delete something you’ve posted, it’s no longer visible but it can take up to 90 days to be removed from our systems.
The updated terms will take effect for everyone on Facebook around the world on July 31, 2019, and you can preview the changes by visiting our Terms of Service page. Beyond these updates, we’ll keep working on ways to make sure people understand how our business works, how their information is used and how they can control it.