Facebook deadline tomorrow - not so fast!

There's a message floating around Facebook that you might've seen pasted in your uncle's feed. It suggests that "everything you've ever posted becomes public from tomorrow." It also suggests that you'll only be able to stop Facebook from sharing all your information if you post a certain block of text and reference to a certain statute. I cannot emphasize enough: This is absolute nonsense and no such event will take place tomorrow – or ever, really.

If you'll take a peek at the bit in this copypasta message here: "Facebook is now a public entity." This indicates the point at which this message went viral – or at least the point at which it was made most popular. It came back in the year 2012 when Facebook first went public with its IPO. It's been copied and pasted by millions of users ever since. It's absolutely mad how many times I and we have seen this message – or similar versions as such.

This message recently popped up several times in our news feeds from people across all social borders. It's gone viral once more. It's not clear why this happened here, at the start of 2019, once more – but here it is again!

No amount of citing of rules and/or posting of words on Facebook by users will result in any sort of obligation on Facebook's part to handle your personal information in any certain way. Meanwhile, Facebook is indeed sharing your information, and information about what you search, who is related to you, and what you click, to companies of all sorts.

When you sign up for Facebook, you essentially sign away all rights to anything you share – within reason, of course. Facebook doesn't own the rights to a photo your grandmother took in 1962 of JFK. But they do – believe it or not – have the right to do almost anything they like with the information they gather whilst monitoring your activities in and around their site.

You may want to take a peek at how Facebook recently clarified their 'data sharing' partnerships. You might also want to take a look at how Facebook has a plan to track you offline. That's not nonsense right there – that's the real deal.

I recommend you copy-paste the following instead:

Everything you've ever posted will remain as public as it's ever been here on Facebook, regardless of the messages you post. Take a peek at the SlashGear post over at https://www.facebook.com/SlashGear/photos/a.196108350428407/2090691717636718/ to learn why it's mostly just nonsense.

You might also want to check if your photos were exposed in the most recent leak. That's only the most recent leak, mind you – take a peek below for more recent updates.