Snap, Click, Post, Like: the normal rhythm of a social media user, who uses popular social media/sharing sites to broadcast stories from their day-to-day lives to the world. Most users are content with their relationship with social sharing platforms, so long as the service is uninterrupted. Social sharing platforms allow users to share their lives, see their friend’s stories, and even make comments too. However, a critical analysis of the relationship between social media and its users may change the way that we think about the content that is passed between ourselves and the platforms we use.
User Data vs User Content
What is considered content? Essentially, it is any authored data that is willingly created by a user for use on a social media platform. Content can be anything, and it’s simple to produce. Everything from text, photos, images, or videos created and shared can be considered content.
It is important to distinguish between user-generated content and user-generated data. Some data is created by the act of a user browsing a website, such as their web traffic data that includes their browser type, public IP address, time logs, and cookies. This type of data, although problematic in its ability to identify a user based on browsing history and IP, is not authored, or ‘owned’ by a user. Privacy-minded users can choose to withhold this information from being shared with their internet service provider through tools such as virtual private networks (VPNs), but at the end of the day, the user does not ‘own’ the copyright to use his or her IP address or browser name, as they are numbers assigned to identify users.
Content is separate from user-generated data as its authorship and ownership can be defined by copyright licensing within a specific platform. Typically a user that creates a piece of content (e.g. takes a photo of themselves), has full authorship and copyrights to that photo. However, users may not be aware of the conditions laid out in the terms of service and end user license agreements that alters the copyright status of content they upload.
Prosumption in the Third Wave of Capitalism
In Alvin Toffler’s 1980 text The Third Wave, he writes about an economic movement and convergence in the means of production and consumption, where the activities that consume also requires production at the same time. He coined the term Prosumer: a person who is “part of a new ‘wikinomic’ model where businesses put consumers to work” (Ritzer & Jurgenson, 2010, p.17). Toffler argues that the result of a saturation of demand for mass-produced products spurs the demand for mass-produced and highly-customized products for every individual. These highly-customized products require the consumer to produce the customization that he or she desires. Toffler cites examples such as producing the work of a bank teller at an ATM machine, being a caller on a call-in radio show, and using self-checkout machines as cases where consumption and production are intertwined and inseparable.
Prosumer: a person who is “part of a new ‘wikinomic’ model where businesses put consumers to work” (Ritzer & Jurgenson, 2010, p.17).
Toffler argues that prosumption is the natural evolution of Marxist capitalism, as capital requires continuous growth to capture additional surplus value. Prosumption not only allows capital to increase corporate profit margins through ‘overcharging’ consumers above the cost of production and ‘underpaying’ employees to extract surplus value from labour, but also makes it so that “prosumers seem to enjoy, even love, what they are doing and are willing to devote long hours to it for no pay” (Ritzer & Jurgenson, 2010, p.22). In the digital economy, prosumption exists within the social media platforms where users freely and simultaneously create (produce) the content in which they browse (consume).
Capital? My Content?
Although some users may be indifferent to the prosumer mode of production that exists within social media sites, others may choose to reassess their relationship with these platforms, especially after a review of the terms and conditions that outline the ownership of user generated content within these platforms. An understanding of a social media platform’s political economy can help users make better judgement as to which, if any, platforms on which they choose to be a prosumer.
In this article, I will briefly review the content ownership terms and conditions for the three most popular social media platforms in the world: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Facebook’s recent privacy scandal with Cambridge Analytica potentially decreased the public‘s opinion and trust towards its platform, and privacy on social media in general. In the wake of the controversy, Facebook released a new data policy on April 2018 that aims to provide a more transparent description of what happens to user data collected by the social networking company.
Who Owns Your Content on Facebook? Answer: You (let Facebook use it)
While this may seem surprising for some readers, users of Facebook actually do own their own content when they share or upload to Facebook’s servers. In Facebook’s new post-GDPR Terms of Service, they mention:
“You grant us 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.” (Section 3, Part 3)
The license they describe is required for Facebook to provide its services to you as a social networking site. An example of the usage of this license happens when you search the name of a new friend and recognize him or her through their profile picture. Facebook requires this license for that new friend’s profile picture to be displayed to others. In addition, you can revoke your license by deleting your content or account, but only if you have not shared your content with others (e.g. Direct Messages, wall posts). Facebook also states:
“You can end this license any time by deleting your content or account. You should know that, for technical reasons, content you delete may persist for a limited period of time in backup copies (though it will not be visible to other users). In addition, content you delete may continue to appear if you have shared it with others and they have not deleted it.” (Section 3, Part 3)
However, the clause within the license regarding the transferability of the license may worry some users. Although Facebook does not have ownership of your content, they specify that they are allowed to use your content, and sell the rights to use your content, to others as well. A hint of their intentions is revealed in their inclusion of the rights to “publicly perform or display, and create derivative works of your content” (Section 3, Part 1), suggesting that Facebook aims to use your content in ways outside of providing its service as a social networking website.
Twitter has also been in hot water for selling its user’s public tweets to Global Science Research for semantic analysis and targeted marketing during the 2016 election in the United States. However, what do Twitter’s terms and services say about the ownership of a user’s content?
Who Owns Your Content on Twitter? Answer: You let Twitter borrow it
Twitter’s Terms of Service states:
“You retain your rights to any Content you submit, post or display on or through the Services. What’s yours is yours — you own your Content (and your incorporated audio, photos and videos are considered part of the Content).” (Section 3)
“By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed). This license authorizes us to make your Content available to the rest of the world and to let others do the same. You agree that this license includes the right for Twitter to provide, promote, and improve the Services and to make Content submitted to or through the Services available to other companies, organizations or individuals for the syndication, broadcast, distribution, promotion or publication of such Content on other media and services, subject to our terms and conditions for such Content use.” (Section 3)
Similar to Facebook’s terms of service, Twitter outlines an agreement that grants them a royalty-free and transferable license to use your content, and sell that license to third parties as well. In 2010, a photographer named David Morel took photos of the aftermath of a devastating earthquake in Haiti and uploaded some on Twitter. Some news outlets downloaded the images from Twitter and placed them in newspapers. Eventually, Morel was awarded $1.2 million as a court judgement, as these news outlets did not purchase the license for these photos. However, under Twitter’s terms of service, news outlets could have contacted Twitter directly to negotiate a licensing deal for Morel’s photos and would not have to pay Morel for his work, but would pay Twitter a fee to access Twitter’s royalty-free license of his work.
Instagram made headlines in 2012 after the platform was purchased by Facebook and announced that it planned on using its user’s Instagram posts in their advertisements without asking for consent or compensating their users. Let’s look at its Terms of Service now to see if that is still the case.
Who Owns Your Content on Instagram? Answer: You … let Instagram borrow it
Instagram’s Terms of Service state:
“Instagram does not claim ownership of any Content that you post on or through the Service. Instead, you hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to use the Content that you post on or through the Service, subject to the Service’s Privacy Policy”
“Some of the Service is supported by advertising revenue and may display advertisements and promotions, and you hereby agree that Instagram may place such advertising and promotions on the Service or on, about, or in conjunction with your Content. The manner, mode and extent of such advertising and promotions are subject to change without specific notice to you.”
The terms clearly state that Instagram does not claim ownership of the photos that you post, but it seems like their practice of appropriating user content has not been halted. Similar to Facebook and Twitter, their terms include a clause about granting a transferable and royalty-free license to use and display your content. Instagram makes it explicit that they may use or remix your content for the purposes of advertising and promotion, and can do so without consent or notice to you.
Ownership V.S. Licensing V.S. Processing
Now that we have taken a look at the Terms of Service for these companies and found out that user content belongs to users, what is the problem with sharing this data? A fundamental threat to a user’s privacy lies not in the ownership of content, but rather in the processing of content. Although these platforms do not own the data users upload to their servers, they can make money through the licensing and processing of your data. The sale of content licenses from these platforms to third parties can result in financial gain for these platforms, as discussed for each social platform. In addition, a second way that these platforms can benefit from your data is through the processing of user data to create profiling data about you to create advertising and market research products in which they can sell to third party firms. This profiling data is created by the social media platforms themselves to increase the accuracy of their profile data about your specific demographics, including your likes, dislikes, habits, wants, and expectations.
This data is not only sold by social media platforms to marketing firms such as Acxiom and Experian, but the data is also used in other applications, such as performing background checks on new employees by firms such as Intellius. These firms are known as data brokers, and an investigation by the United States’ Federal Trade Commission discovered that these data brokers buy and sell profiling data from social media platforms. Recently, Facebook updated its policy regarding data brokers after its Cambridge Analytica fiasco and the European GDPR regulation, and reduced the capacity of its Partner Categories program that allowed data brokers access to its trove of profiling data of its users.
The Cost of Using Social Media: Adding Fuel to the Fire
Now that we have a better sense of the uses of our content, we should worry less about the ownership of our content. While content posted on social media can be used for advertisements, these platforms are smart enough to realize that using content in such an explicit way would undoubtably alienate their user base from uploading more and more content. (Although if you think you have a Pulitzer Prize winning shot, watermark it before you post it!)
Instead, we should be more concerned about what licenses we grant when we use social media platforms, as well as what kind of profiling data could be made as a by-product of uploading our content to a central information repository about our habits, likes, and dislikes. Ultimately, all users have a choice to not participate in this information exchange by electing to not engage with platforms that commodify user generated data.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not constitute legal or financial advice.
Always do your own research for informed decisions.
Image Credits
user by Three Six Five from the Noun Project
group by Rudez Studio from the Noun Project
license by beth bolton from the Noun Project
Sources / Articles You May Be Interested In
Facebook TOS – https://www.facebook.com/terms.php
Twitter TOS – https://twitter.com/en/tos
Instagram TOS – https://help.instagram.com/478745558852511
Ritzer, G., & Jurgenson, N. (2010). Production, Consumption, Prosumption. Journal of Consumer Culture, 10(1), 13-36. Retrieved from http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1469540509354673#
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Wave_(Toffler_book)
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=0e178580-108a-4394-9fa0-1c6c2f5a6b41
http://adage.com/article/digital/instagram-warns-users-plans-images-ads/238822/
https://towardsdatascience.com/impact-of-data-and-analytics-on-social-media-in-2018-595a3bd4fb60
Hi Jason, Great article! Really informative about how social media turns consumers into producers and how content is licensed through these services. But I’m wondering how long this claim, from your subsection ‘User Data vs User Content’, will hold true:
“This type of [user] data, although problematic in its ability to identify a user based on browsing history and IP, is not authored, or ‘owned’ by a user.”
I’m hopeful that, under new forms of legislation like the E.U.’s GDPR and California’s Consumer Privacy Act, user data created by using services like Facebook and Twitter will be universally recognized as owned by the person who creates it. For example, under the California act, personal information will soon include any personal identifiers like IP addresses, geolocation, biometric data, browsing history, and psychometric data, and any and all inferences that can be made about a person based on this data.
Hopefully progressive models like the one’s being adopted by the E.U. and California will influence other governments to consider policies that better protect consumers and our democratic values alike. And maybe soon, there won’t be such a stark difference between, and confusion about, user data and user content. They’re not all that different, after all.
Looking forward to reading part 2!