If you were online over the past few days, you probably heard about Facebook’s attempt to change it’s terms of service and the ensuing uproar this caused. They have since rescinded the changes pending further review.

The sticking point seemed to be a combination of who “owns” the things users put on Facebook  and what rights of use that ownership permits. This raises some interesting larger questions about the impacts and repercussions of simply using free social networks. It also shed some light on how few people tend to read TOS in the first place.

As someone with a fairly large digital footprint, as well as a strong supporter of Creative Commons, I’m used to my stuff (photos, tweets, posts) being shared and popping up in unexpected places. In exchange for an attribution of some sort, I’m pretty comfortable “losing control” of my content in this sense.

I think this most recent controversy reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of Facebook (and the web). If you think the things you’re doing, saying, creating online are completely private then you should think again. This isn’t a bad thing, although it can be in the wrong companies’ hands. It just different from the way many of us are used to communicating. In fact, Facebook has made some impressive advances over the last year in beefing up their user-customizable privacy settings.

This all boils down to that fact that we just need to be smarter about the things we put online.

How do you feel about this? Which side of the Facebook Wall are you on? Do you share smartly?

Tags: controversy, facebook, privacy, sharing