Where Do These Rumors Come From?!

     It’s making the rounds again and I saw 5 or 6 Facebook posts today stating that starting tomorrow a new Facebook rule says they can use your photo and everything you've ever posted becomes public, even messages that have been deleted. 
    People are advised that they can follow a procedure that will give notice to Facebook that it is strictly forbidden to disclose, copy, distribute, or take any other action against you, blah, blah, blah. The hoax cites law (UCC 1-308- 1 1 308-103) and the Rome Statute as defenses against Facebook’s use of your images. 
     The Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) contains rules applying to many types of commercial contracts, including contracts related to the sale of goods, leasing of goods, use of negotiable instruments, banking transactions, letters of credit, documents of title for goods, investment securities, and secured transactions.
     The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court is the treaty that established the International Criminal Court in 1998 and went into force in 2002. It give the ICC the jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, not copyright infringement and privacy concerns. 
     Well meaning, but gullible people keep falling for this old hoax which has been around since at least 2012. What they don’t realize is that when they joined Facebook they agreed to their terms and conditions and granted the company a “non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, and worldwide license to host, use, distribute, modify, run, copy, publicly perform or display, translate, and create derivative works of your content (consistent with your privacy and application settings).” 
     Even if you delete pictures they’ll still be available on the site’s archives and backups. Rather like when you delete something on your hard drive, it’s still there. Police find incriminating evidence of deleted files all the time. 
     Facebook users are advised to publish a Privacy Statement as a means of stopping Facebook from using material they post and some versions mention Channel 13 News as a source. Channel 13 news could be literally hundreds of news stations. Where I live Channel 13 is in a city a hundred miles away and is not even available locally. 
     The Privacy Notice has no legal standing and posting it will do nothing whatsoever to protect the privacy of users. The whole message is useless garbage, but for a lot of people, if it’s on Facebook, it’s true.

Other posts about Facebook: 
Facebook Addiction
A Rant 
Politics and Facebook Twaddle