The site has published a new SRR for public scrutiny

Aug 12, 2009 07:27 GMT  ·  By
Facebook has published a new Statement of Rights and Responsibilities for public scrutiny
   Facebook has published a new Statement of Rights and Responsibilities for public scrutiny

Facebook is proposing an updated Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (SRR), basically the site's Terms of Service, and has made the upcoming version of it available for public scrutiny. The social network claims it's just a minor update but there are some changes that are bound to cause a stir, especially the explicit banning of sponsored status updates, which are becoming increasingly popular, for those publishing them anyway, especially on Twitter but also on Facebook.

“The proposed SRR we're announcing today mostly includes clarifying changes and minor updates. We encourage you to read the revised SRR in its entirety on the Facebook Site Governance Page, where you can review the changes and give us your comments,“ the announcement reads. However, the revised SRR now clearly states: “You will not use your personal profile for your own commercial gain (such as selling your status update to an advertiser).“

This effectively bans services like Izea or Magpie, which pay users to create “sponsored” posts on blogs, Twitter and even Facebook, and is sure to make quite a few users happy. This type of services have been around for a while but are becoming increasingly used, especially on Twitter, where “sponsored tweets” are generating quite a backlash. These sponsored posts typically endorse a product providing a link to the advertiser's page or an online store but are also marked as being paid.

Twitter allows for sponsored tweets, or at least doesn't explicitly ban them, but Facebook is taking an opposing stance and, when the new rules become enforced, the paid status updates will be gone from the social network. Facebook Pages on the other hand do allow for any kind of commercial content and will continue to do so as the changes only affect individual user profiles.

Another interesting change is for users in countries embargoed by the US. Until now the SRR said “you will not use Facebook if you are located in a country embargoed by the U.S.” However, the proposed version changes that to refer only to commercial uses of the site from countries under embargo. This is in fact in keeping with the US law, which restricts only for commercial activities, despite what IM providers might think. The change is no doubt related to the recent incidents in Iran in which Facebook played a role, at least outside the country.