How private is your social media privacy agreement?

“By clicking ‘sign up’, you agree to our terms and that you have read our data-use policy, including our cookie use.”
There’s nothing sweet about these cookies and I hope you have a clean search record on the Internet.

If you’ve registered with Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, you’ve just given these platforms the authority to access a lot of information in terms of the fine print you probably didn’t read.
A comparison between the three plat-forms’ privacy policies proves that their reference to your rights is overshadowed by their indemnity clauses.

Users are often faced with offensive content on social media. These sites have rules which prohibit certain content.
Facebook discourages users from the following:
• Promotion or encouragement of self-mutilation in any form.
• Bullying and harassment – repeatedly targeting others with unwanted friend requests or messages qualifies as a form of harassment.
• Hate speech is not permitted, but Facebook can distinguish between serious and humorous speech.
• In as far as graphic content is concerned, subscribers are advised that the use of graphic images, shared for sadistic effect or to celebrate or glorify violence, has no place on Facebook. The use of graphic images to condemn the actions portrayed therein may be justified, according to these standards. Facebook limits nudity – pornography, and especially child pornography is not allowed.
Instagram offers a short summary of what prospective posters need to remember before posting online. They call the list “The Short”: post your own photos and videos, keep your clothes on, be respectful, don’t spam and have fun.

Twitter has issued “The Twitter Rules”, which focus on authenticity to a great extent. Subscribers are urged to refrain from impersonating others – this journalist recalls a fake Queen Elizabeth profile announcing gin o’ clock 12 times a day – and contravening trademark and intellectual property law. Violent threats and abuse are also discouraged. How are these rules applied? Although Facebook, Twitter and Instagram do not guarantee that the rules will be enforced to users’ satisfaction, subscribers are urged to lodge complaints by sending direct messages to the platforms’ inboxes. They then investigate the posts that illicit complaints and may decide to remove them. Where a post contravenes their policies to a serious extent, they may choose to terminate the culprit’s account.

Although the inconsequent approach to regulating content is a problem to some subscribers, few realise that they have agreed to a much more troubling agreement when signing up as a user for Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.

Lowvelder studied the privacy policies of these platforms. Subscribers who agree to the user agreements say yes to the following:
• Your subscriber information (username and profile photo) is publicly available. Twitter warns subscribers that tweets are immediately delivered via SMS to search engines, developers, publishers and institutions such as universities which analyse tweets. You give Facebook, Twitter or Instagram the permission to use photos and videos, subject to the privacy settings which you have selected.

But how private is private when you’ve posted on someone’s timeline?

Remember that the social platform’s right to the usage of your post grows along with the distribution of it. On Facebook, this means that Fanus has a profile with limited privacy settings. He takes a photo of Susara in her disco dress and tags her. Her friends can see the photo as well, regardless of whether they are his Facebook friends or not.

Twitter warns users from the get-go that their tweets are broadcasted worldwide when it is posted.

A chill runs down your spine when you realise that you gave these platforms the authority to track your location whenever you logon.
They may also discern which device you are using and monitor your activities on their pages – the data reflecting your page activity is crammed into a file that is called a cookie. They may share these with third-party partners. Instagram and Twitter make use of Google Analytics, which provides them with topics you search frequently. Between Google Analytics, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, they can probably write an e-book on your web-browsing history and social-media tendencies. They could be doing it as we speak.

And you agreed to it.

The privacy policies of Twitter, Instagram and Facebook’s statement of rights and responsibilities contain hefty disclaimer clauses.
They state that they provide rules for subscriber conduct, but have no control over subscribers’ actions. Users, third-party applications, business partners and affiliates are all responsible for their own behaviour and users agree that they cannot hold the platform liable for any losses incurred.

Should you elect to institute legal action against Facebook, you agree to do so in the US District Court of the Northern District of California or a state court located in San Mateo County. However, as South Africans contract with Facebook Ireland, you’ll have to plan for a trip to greener pastures.

South African courts have indicated that legal disputes arising from misconduct on social-media sites should rather be settled between the parties involved. This was emphasised in H v W, when the South Gauteng High Court intervened by ordering the respondent to remove a defamatory Facebook comment and to refrain from posting further comments about the applicant. Last year, the North Gauteng High Court awarded R40 000 in damages to Ms Louise Isparta after the defendants in the case made defamatory comments about her on Facebook.

Social-media platforms have risks – and you, dear subscriber, can’t even say that you didn’t sign up for them.