Beware When Uploading your Photos to Facebook!

Make sure to read Facebook's terms carefully!

Earlier Adobe released an update to Lightroom, version 3.2, that allows you to publish photos directly from Lightroom and onto Facebook. As convenient as this may be, it is not without dangers to do this, especially if you do not know what you are doing!

Facebook Terms of Use

When you signed up with Facebook, did you read their terms? Most people will answer no at this question, but even if you did, I am sure that you do not remember all that was in there.

I want to draw your attention to a specific bit of the terms right now that involves publishing of content (text, photos and videos etc.) to Facebook and who owns the rights to use this afterwards.

  1. For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (“IP content”), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to yourprivacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (“IP License”). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.
  2. When you delete IP content, it is deleted in a manner similar to emptying the recycle bin on a computer. However, you understand that removed content may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time (but will not be available to others).

The terms are noticeably clear when it comes to what Facebook can do with your content and I the best part is that you revoke their right to use it when you remove the content from Facebook.

If you are fine with the way that they could use it, by all means go ahead and upload it to Facebook. If you however would like to retain the control yourself, do not post content that you want to protect from spreading without your approval to Facebook.

My strategy?

I try to keep it simple. When it comes to my photos and videos, I like to be able to control the spread myself. Therefore, I do not post any serious photography to Facebook. Snapshots and similar types of work is something that I am not as reluctant to post because of their nature and the fact that if I don’t, the audience I am posting it for most likely will not see it.