Facebook restores old Terms of Service.

From the Faceblog:

A couple of weeks ago, we revised our terms of use hoping to clarify some parts for our users. Over the past couple of days, we received a lot of questions and comments about the changes and what they mean for people and their information. Based on this feedback, we have decided to return to our previous terms of use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.

Questions and Comments - thats putting it mildly!!!!

Anyway, the aim is now to hold a poll about proposed changes:

If you'd like to get involved in crafting our new terms, you can start posting your questions, comments and requests in the group we've created—Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities. I'm looking forward to reading your input.

I'd love to believe their intentions are honourable. However, like the bankers who broke the Banks, its clear that have forgotten nothing about their intentions and remembered nothing about the outcry to date:

Our next version will be a substantial revision from where we are now. It will reflect the principles I described yesterday around how people share and control their information, and it will be written clearly in language everyone can understand. Since this will be the governing document that we'll all live by, Facebook users will have a lot of input in crafting these terms.

Ah, so apparently I merely misunderstood the language in the TOS...silly me. WTF? I understood the language perfectly well, including the language that went missing! And Facebook, FYI none of the other social networks have these sort of Terms and Conditions.

By their deeds shall ye know them, and if ever there has been a company which has pushed the limits of privacy and identity violation, its Facebook.

Update - The Grauniad's Charles Arthur argues that the difference between online and offline worlds is that everything is more visible online. Thus, Facebook should just offer loyalty cards instead, after all no-one looks at the small print on those.