Like clockwork, every couple of months some "fact" about Facebook goes viral. Facebook is going to commencement charging you money! Copy and paste this condition or Facebook will cook your children! As before long as you lot upload them, Facebook owns your photos!

That last one is particularly mutual, so let's talk about it.

What Rights Does Facebook Have to Your Photos?

Let's start by getting on the same bones page: no, Facebook doesn't own your photos. That's not how copyright or real life works. They're still your photos, not Facebook'due south. In fact, it'due south right in Facebook'south terms of service: "You own all of the content and information you mail on Facebook."

Got it? Good. Myth busted. Now let'south address what rights Facebook does have with your photos once you upload them. Here'south the relevant scrap of the terms of service:

You own all of the content and information you postal service on Facebook, and you can control how it is shared through your privacy and application settings. In addition:

  1. For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (IP content), you specifically give united states the following permission, field of study to your privacy and application settings: you lot grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-complimentary, 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 business relationship unless your content has been shared with others, and they have non deleted it.
  2. When you lot delete IP content, it is deleted in a style similar to emptying the recycle bin on a computer. Still, you understand that removed content may persist in backup copies for a reasonable catamenia of time (merely will non be bachelor to others).

So Facebook gets a "non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license" to your photos. Let'south break it down.

A "royalty-free worldwide license" means Facebook is free to use your photos pretty much how they'd similar anywhere in the world without paying you a penny or asking your permission.

"Transferable" and "sub-licensable" mean that Facebook tin either transfer the license to some other entity or just sub-license it, once again without your permission.

Finally, "non-exclusive" means that you're gratis to license your photograph to anyone else you want. Just because you've uploaded a photo to Facebook, it doesn't mean you can't share information technology on Twitter, or practise whatever else you want with information technology.

These are all pretty broad and scary terms merely, for Facebook to work as intended, it needs this sort of vague license. Displaying the photos you lot postal service to Facebook in your friend'due south News Feeds would be impossible otherwise: if you hadn't given them a license, it would be a violation of your copyright for them to show that photo to your friends.

You're Notwithstanding In Control

The most important judgement, still, is "subject to your privacy and awarding settings". Through Facebook's privacy settings you're able to control exactly how your images are used. If you only want your shut friends to see them? You can practice that. This means that, even though Facebook's license is broad, you're still in control of how it's implemented.

RELATED: How to Brand All Your By Facebook Posts More Private

Some other of import clause is, "This IP License ends when y'all delete your IP content or your account." Once again, this gives you control. If you delete a photograph, Facebook's license is revoked. It's the same when you delete your account.

RELATED: How to Delete a Facebook Postal service

To sum up, this all means that:

  • Facebook doesn't own your content, you do.
  • Facebook'south terms of service sound scary simply really aren't.
  • Your privacy settings control how Facebook uses your photos.

There's no demand to worry near Facebook using your photos to brand T-shirts or flogging them on stock photo sites. They make about $60 a twelvemonth for every The states or Canadian user; selling your photos of you at Coachella or playing Dungeons and Dragons wouldn't fifty-fifty come close to generating that sort of revenue.

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