They just don’t get it

Jan 3rd, 2008 | By Steven Hodson | Category: The Social Web

A contract is a contract. It’s been interesting watching the conversation going on around Scoble and his Facebook account being suspended because the Facebook cops bots caught him running a script that scraped his data from Facebook. I’ve already talked about the results and the effects it could have against Facebook; not to mention the bonuses for Robert once this all settles down and he’s back scribbling on his Facebook Wall - which we all know is going to happen.

What I do want to look at here though is the background noise that is going on in other blogs and comments.

It would appear from what Robert told Dave Winer in a phone call, about 30% of the people that he has talked to or have left comments are on the side of Facebook regarding his suspension. The majority according to him are on his side:

Scoble called a few minutes ago. I asked what the consensus was. He said it was about 70 percent in his favor, 30 percent in Facebook’s. I think we can win over the 30 percent by saying that there should be a system whereby people can decide how much information they want to share with Scoble, or people like Scoble, or me, or people like me, or BofA or the DEA, KGB or CIA. Further, that system is not Facebook, unless they change.

Dave himself in the post comes out in favor of Robert but he couches it all in some idea that Facebook secretly really wants to open up their network and that once they re-instate Roberts account and thing settle down they’ll make a big show of opening the floodgates of data. Now I’m not even going to touch that idea with a ten foot pole because of how off the wall it is but what I do wonder about after reading a bunch of comments and posts like Dave’s is this - what part of agreeing to a Terms of Service (TOS) do you folks not get?

Really … what part?

Because the fact is that the moment you agree to any TOS you are bound by contract law to all parts of that TOS. You can’t pick and choose which parts of it you want to agree with once you have signed on the dotted line; or clicked on an Accept button. You don’t like a contract don’t frikken sign the damn thing, you don’t like the rules of the game that Facebook has set out in its TOS - don’t use the frikken service. Don’t come whining and moaning about them suspending your account because you got caught breaking some part of the TOS that you don’t like.

I don’t care how self-important people like Scoble, Winer or anyone else of the early adopter crowd like to think that their opinions on how things should be the fact is you are breaking the law when you pull shit like Robert did and Facebook has every right to seek recompense if they so wish. Maybe instead of pontificating you should do some reading up on contract and tort law.

As for Dave’s supposition that those 30% of obviously dense people could be won over to his and Robert’s thinking I have a better suggestion. If you don’t like the rules that Facebook has set out and that you are required to agree to on joining don’t join and if you are a member run like hell in the other direction. sure that may not be as much fun as being a renegade and giving Facebook the finger but at least you won’t be breaking the law.

You don’t like a Terms of Service then don’t agree to it - have a frikken backbone instead of just wanting to be part of the cool crowd.

UPDATE: From Twitter

Scobleizer said at 1/3/2008 4:49:41 PM
Facebook turned on my account again. http://tinyurl.com/24dugs

Like we didn’t know that was going to happen….

Listening to: Redshift - Redshift - Spin

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