Chances are, you’ve seen those posts on Facebook that people copy and paste from one status to the next. Either you absolutely hate them or you are one of the people who share them around, right?
Well, one of the ‘copy-paste’ messages that seems to be quite popular at the moment has been making its rounds since 2012, according to Slash Gear. This message basically says that if you don’t copy and paste the message onto your wall/timeline everything you’ve posted/your profile will become public to everyone else on the social network itself. This is completely absurd and while you might think that we shouldn’t need a reminder that its BULL, many people do.
The message reads as follows:
Deadline tomorrow !!! Everything you’ve ever posted becomes public from tomorrow. Even messages that have been deleted or the photos not allowed. It costs nothing for a simple copy and paste, better safe than sorry. Channel 13 News talked about the change in Facebook’s privacy policy. I do not give Facebook or any entities associated with Facebook permission to use my pictures, information, messages or posts, both past, and future. With this statement, I give notice to Facebook it is strictly forbidden to disclose, copy, distribute, or take any other action against me based on this profile and/or its contents.
Posting this to your wall is not going to prevent anything of the sort from happening. Everything you’ve posted is going to remain as it currently is and even if Facebook were to make it all public, sharing something like this to your wall would not stop that from happening. Some versions of this post include a ‘better safe than sorry warning’ and noted that there is some kind of attorney’s advice being given, these are also complete BULL.
Facebook has even touched on this topic before and wrote as follows:
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.
Everything you post online is already public to an extent. We should already be a bit more mindful of the things we post. No, they do not own your photos but the words you write and the things you share are not just going to disappear, that’s not how the internet works, once you put something out there it is out there for good.
When we sign up for Facebook, we sign away a lot of control over the things we choose to put online even without taking the time to read through properly. Facebook owns the information it gets from you and using its app/website and you can’t do much about that if anything at all. That being said, please stop sharing this post around as it is not doing anyone any good.
How many times have you seen this message shared on your timeline? Things like this will make their rounds for as long as the internet is present but the less often the better, right?