When you post on Twitter(1) or Bluesky(2) you grant them a broad perpetual license to use, modify, and sublicense your content. You effectively make them co-owners of your content. They can mine it and monetize it. They can even sell it. When you post on Mastodon(3) most instances take no license at all. That's right, they tell you what they are doing with your content—storing posts and delivering them—but no license.
1/2
#twittermigration #TermsOfService #PrivacyPolicy #ContentLicense
Twitter and Bluesky (and almost all corporate social media providers) say they need a broad license to do what they do. But the truth is that they don’t need a license to publish your content—or they could take a much more limited publishing only license—but they don’t because the way they make money is processing your content, profiling you, and selling information about you to ad tech companies. For this they need to co-own your content.
So it’s up to you whether you want to give away licenses to your content. You have been led to believe that the necessary cost of using internet services is to give away a broad license. It’s not, you have options.
(1) Twitter Terms of Service: https://twitter.com/en/tos
(2) Bluesky Terms of Service: https://staging.bsky.app/support/tos
(3) Mastodon Privacy Policy (mastodon.social): https://mastodon.social/privacy-policy
3/3
#twittermigration #ContentLicense #TermsOfService #PrivacyPolicy #Bluesky
@mastodonmigration @Bam Yes. Shoehorning everything to the copyright licensing & ownership model is a narrative that is widely spread over most of the west at least.
There are no in-betweens, up to the point that people have difficulty even discussing alternatives, because the language and terms for alternatives is foreign and difficult to them.
Ownership equal success in the grand narrative. And people have no problem giving it away because they think it is a given.
@TomDelargy Here is the information that Twitter provides on Deactivating/Deleting your account: https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/how-to-deactivate-twitter-account
Note: "Deactivating your account does not remove data from Twitter systems."
No mention of the expiration of the content license.
@monbrielle @mastodonmigration exactly; this is the same moral panic that happens every time people look at the same boilerplate text in every terms of service for every social media platform ever and decide to flip their shit about something they don't understand
it's been going on since two thousand and fucking fifteen, and it's still going on today https://www.techdirt.com/2015/11/02/stop-freaking-out-about-snapchats-terms-service-you-read-it-wrong/
@takelgryph @monbrielle Not all Terms of Service are the same. Mike Masnick is right about the Snapchat terms in the article, and the important reason is the limitation [emphasis mine]:
"We will use this license for the LIMITED PURPOSE of operating, developing, providing, promoting, and improving the Services..."
Twitter and Bluesky do not so limit their licenses effectively giving them a co-ownership of the content.
@takelgryph @monbrielle That said, social media companies are afforded broad protections against people suing them for publishing their content (Section 230), and the fact that "everyone does it" does not mean that it is necessary. Corporations do it because they can. They have convinced you that giving them a license is OK. If you are cool with that, go ahead, but you do have the option of not giving up rights to your content by posting on Mastodon.
@monbrielle @mastodonmigration
They clearly don't need it.
There are apps that don't do this and operate just fine. The original post is pointing this out.
I have seen a report from the EU Commission on new rules for what they label the Metaverse, backed by their GDPR. It's a combination of VR and Social Media.
Good luck finding current info via US-based search engines. The whole feel of this web-page is different with easy checks on such things as tracking permission. There is a link to the PDF of the conclusions.
Quite true. They are never truly altruistic.
@diazona Thanks, sorry for the confusion. The post you replied to is 2/3 in a thread in which the top post says: "You effectively make them co-owners of your content." The sentence in 2/3 relates to that previous context, but it is not as clear as it should be. Secondarily, not sure, but the rationale could be along the lines of it being you that is reproducing the copies by posting your content. Mastodon may simply be the technology you are using to do so.
@mastodonmigration On the idea of you (the poster) being the one who is reproducing the content: that's an interesting angle but not one that I've ever seen put forward in my prior reading about copyright. The conventional interpretation is that you, the author, distribute a copy of your content to the website operator, e.g. the Mastodon server owner. The website operator will then choose to make additional copies of that content and distribute those copies to other people, e.g. end users or other server owners. The software of Mastodon/Twitter/Bluesky are simply means of making and distributing all those copies. I suspect it'd be a bit tough to argue that you (author) are the one making and distributing all the copies, because it's the site operator, not you, who is choosing who gets a copy. Dunno if things would be different from a legal perspective on a site with fine-grained access controls. (2/2)
@the100rabh Yes. You have a copyrite to things that you publish on social media. You own the content. The issue under discussion here is that when you publish on corporate social media, by their Terms of Service, you also grant them broad license to your content, so for all intensive purposes they own it too.
@mastodonmigration Here in Europe, personal data includes any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person. This means that even the most basic contact information, such as business card details or simply a name and email address, falls under the General Data Protection Regulation.
It's why Facebook, for instance, has been fined millions of euros.
I hope the U.S. will follow suit.
@js @AutisticMumTo3 @adrianmorales @mastodonmigration
Apart from all the EU regulations that were enshrined in national law, being how EU regulations typically work. The Data Protection Act 2018 did that for GDPR, and it didn't disappear with brexit because DPA 2018 is a UK law.
This is why the Tories were pushing the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill rolling back all the EU regulations that got written into UK law.
@jackemled @mastodonmigration In particular, compare to this provision of Itch.io's publisher terms establishing revocation of copyright license through delisting:
"If you choose to remove your content from the Service, this license [to the Company to distribute your work] shall terminate within a commercially reasonable time after you remove your content from the Service."
@mastodonmigration guess there will be no copyright claims for generative AI training on tweets! Who still thinks #EMuskovy under paid for #Twitter ? Just something to think about for those still using that #SnakePit
Devenish Smith
Mastodon Migration
Serion
Virginia Murr
ProtectiveHen
Toni Aittoniemi
Tom Delargy
monbrielle
Takel 
Austin (=> @
Landa 
FediThing has moved!
DesignDamon
Brian
Wolf_Baginski
PJT North
David Zaslavsky
Seth Goldstein
Dennis Jackson
Drew Mochak
Cunty Bob
Dan Shick
100rabh™
JohannesDienst
sebsauvage
Adrian Morales
AutisticMumTo3
J$
JetlagJen
Pourquoi pas?
quangobaud
Julie Collishaw
Paul Quirk
Alison Meeks
Personne
Luna Lactea
Damian Yerrick
Move forward or die!
SteveBologna
Eric Nicholls
LG Media
fluffy 💜
Jaycie