Terms of Use
Welcome to Facebook!
In the summary with messaging, voice and video call services integrated in Facebook products, you will find a contract summary here and here further information that is required by the European Code for Electronic Communications.
Facebook develops technologies and services that help people network with one another, form communities and strengthen their companies.
These terms of use regulate your use of Facebook, Messenger and the other products, features, apps, services, technologies and software we offer (the Facebook products or products), unless we expressly declare that separate terms of use (and not this) apply.
These products are provided to you by Facebook Ireland Limited.
We don't charge you anything for your use of Facebook or the other products and services to which these Terms of Use apply.
Instead, companies and organizations pay us to show you advertisements for their products and services.
By using our products, you agree that we may show you advertisements that we believe are relevant to you and meet your interests.
We use your personal data to determine which advertisements we show you.
We do not sell your personal data to advertisers and we only share information that directly identifies you (e.g. your name, email address or other contact information) with advertisers with your express consent.
In contrast, advertisers can tell us, for example, which target group should see their advertisements.
We then show these ads to those who may be interested in them.
We provide advertisers with reports on the performance of their advertisements to show how users are interacting with their content.
You can find out more about this in Section 2 below.
Our privacy policy explains how we collect and use your personal information to determine some of the advertisements you see and to provide all of the other services described below.
In your settings you can always check your privacy settings with regard to our use of your data.
1. Services We Offer
Our mission is to empower people to form communities and bring the world closer together.
To advance this mission, we provide you with the products and services described below:
We provide you with a personalized experience: Your experience on Facebook differs from that of all other users: starting with the posts, stories, events, advertisements and other content that you see in the news feed or on our video platform, right up to the pages you have subscribed to and other functions you may use, such as cutting edge, marketplace and search.
In order to personalize your experience, we use the data available to us - for example about connections you have made, options and settings that you choose, and what you do on and outside of our products.
We connect you with people and organizations that are important to you: We help you to find people, groups, companies, organizations, etc. that are important to you on the Facebook products you use and to connect with them.
We use the information we have to make suggestions to you and others - for example, joining groups, attending events, subscribing to or sending messages to Pages, watching shows, and people you may be want to add as a friend.
Stronger bonds create better communities.
Therefore, we believe our services are most useful when people are connected to the people, groups, and organizations that interest them.
We give you the opportunity to express yourself and to exchange ideas about things that are important to you: You have many opportunities to express yourself on Facebook and to exchange ideas with friends, family members and others about the things that are important to you - for example by you share status updates, photos, videos and stories about the Facebook products you use, send messages to a friend or several people, create events or groups or add content to your profile.
We have also created new ways - and continue to develop new solutions - for people to use technology, such as augmented reality and 360 video, to create and share more expressive and engaging content on Facebook.
We help you discover content, products and services that may interest you: We show you advertisements, offers and other sponsored content to help you discover content, products and services offered by the many companies and organizations who use Facebook and other Facebook products.
This is explained in more detail in Section 2 below.
We fight harmful behavior and protect and support our community: People can only form communities on Facebook if they feel safe.
We employ dedicated teams around the world and develop advanced technical systems to detect misuse of our products, harmful behavior towards others and situations in which we may be able to help support and protect our community.
If we learn of such content or behavior, we will take appropriate action, e.g. B. by offering help, removing content, blocking access to certain features, deactivating an account or contacting law enforcement authorities.
We share data with other Facebook companies when we discover abuse or harmful behavior by a person who uses one of our products.
We use and develop advanced technologies to provide safe and functional services for everyone: We use and develop advanced technologies - including artificial intelligence, machine learning systems and augmented reality - so that people can use our products safely regardless of their physical ability or geographic location can.
For example, such technology helps visually impaired people understand what or who can be seen in photos or videos shared on Facebook or Instagram.
We are also creating advanced network and communication technology to allow more people to connect to the Internet in areas with restricted access.
We also develop automated systems to improve our ability to identify and remove abusive and dangerous activities that could harm our community and the integrity of our products.
We research ways to improve our services: We conduct research to develop, test and improve our products.
This also includes analyzing the data we have about our users and developing an understanding of how people use our products, for example by carrying out surveys, tests and troubleshooting for new functions.
Our data policy explains how we use data for these research purposes in order to further develop and optimize our services.
We provide consistent and seamless experiences on all products of the Facebook companies: Our products help you to find the people, groups, companies, organizations etc. that are important to you and to connect with them.
We design our systems so that your experience is consistent and seamless across the various Facebook company products you use.
For example, we use data about the people you interact with on Facebook to make it easier for you to connect with them on Instagram or Messenger.
We also enable you to use Messenger to communicate with a company that you have subscribed to on Facebook.
We enable global access to our services: so that we can operate our global service, we have to store and distribute content and data in our data centers and systems around the world, including in countries outside the country in which you live.
This infrastructure can be operated or controlled by Facebook, Inc., Facebook Ireland Limited or their affiliated companies.
2. Financing our services
Instead of paying to use Facebook and the other products and services we offer, by using the Facebook products to which these Terms of Use apply, you agree that we may show you advertisements to highlight them inside and outside of the Products of the Facebook company are paid for by companies and organizations.
We use your personal data, such as B. Information about your activities and interests to show you advertisements that are more relevant to you.
The protection of privacy and personal data was a central component in the design of our advertising system.
This means that we can show you relevant and helpful advertisements without advertisers knowing who you are.
We do not sell your personal data.
We give advertisers the opportunity to tell us, for example, what their business goal is and what type of target audience should see their advertisements (e.g. people aged 18 to 35 who are interested in cycling).
We will then show their advertisement to people who may be interested in it.
We also provide advertisers with reports on the performance of their advertisements so that they can gain insight into how people are interacting with their content on and off Facebook.
For example, we provide advertisers with general demographic and interest-based information (e.g. that an ad was viewed by a woman between the ages of 25 and 34 who lives in Madrid and is interested in software development) to help them target their audience to understand better.
We do not share any information that can be used to directly identify you (information such as your name or email address, which can be used in isolation to contact you or to identify you directly), unless you give us your express consent.
Learn more about how Facebook ads work here.
We collect and use your personal data in order to provide you with the services described above.
You can find out how we collect and use your data in our data policy.
You have controls over what types of ads and advertisers you see, and what types of information we use to determine which ads we show you.
More on this.
3. Your commitments to Facebook and our community
We provide these services to you and others to advance our mission.
In return, it is necessary that you make the following commitments:
Who can use Facebook
When people stand behind their opinions and actions, our community is safer and more accountable.
This is why you need to do the following:
Use the same name that you use in everyday life.
Provide accurate and correct information about you.
Just create a single account (your own) and use your timeline for personal purposes.
Do not share your password, give others access to your Facebook account or transfer your account to someone else (without our consent).
We try to make Facebook fully available and available to everyone.
However, you are not allowed to use Facebook if the following applies:
You are under 13 years old.
You are a convicted sex offender.
We previously deactivated your account for violating our terms of use or guidelines.
You are prohibited from receiving our products, services or software under applicable law.
What to share and do on Facebook
We want people to use Facebook to express themselves and share content that is important to them.
However, this must not be done at the expense of the safety and well-being of others or the integrity of our community.
You therefore agree not to participate in the behavior described below (or to encourage or support others in doing so):
You may not use our products to do or share anything that:
It violates these Terms of Use, our community standards, or any other terms of use and guidelines that apply to your use of Facebook.
It's unlawful, misleading, discriminatory, or fraudulent.
It violates or violates the rights of another person, e.g. B. their intellectual property rights.
You may not upload any viruses or harmful code or do anything that could prevent, overload or impair the proper functioning or appearance of our products.
You may not (without our prior consent) access data on our products using automated methods, collect such data or attempt to access data for which you have no access authorization.
We can remove or block content that violates this policy.
If we remove content that you have shared because of a violation of our community standards, we will notify you accordingly and explain what options you have to request further review, unless you have significantly or repeatedly violated these Terms of Use or the Notification on our part could lead to legal liability for us or others, harm our community, impair or disrupt the integrity or the operation of our services, systems or products, or we are prevented from doing so due to technical restrictions or we are prohibited from doing so for legal reasons.
To further our community, we encourage you to report any content or behavior that you believe violates your rights, including intellectual property rights, or our Terms of Use and Policies.
We may also remove or restrict access to your content, services or information if we determine that this is reasonably necessary to avoid or mitigate negative legal or regulatory effects for Facebook.
You give us these permissions
We need certain authorizations from you in order to provide our services:
Eligibility to use the content you create and share: Some content that you share or upload, such as photos or videos, may be protected by intellectual property laws.
You are the owner of the intellectual property rights (e.g. copyright or trademarks) of any content that you create and share on Facebook and the other Facebook company products you use.
No part of these Terms of Use denies you the rights to your own content.
You can share your content with others as you wish, wherever you want.
However, in order for us to provide our services, it is necessary that you give us some legal consents (referred to as a "license") to use this content.
This is done solely to provide and improve our products and services, as explained in Section 1 above.
In particular, if you share, post or upload content that is protected by intellectual property rights on or in connection with our products, you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sublicensable, royalty-free and worldwide license to use your content (in accordance with your privacy and app settings) host, use, distribute, modify, execute, copy, publicly perform or display, translate and create derivative works therefrom.
This means, for example, that if you share a photo on Facebook, you give us permission to save, copy and share it with others (again in accordance with your settings); this can include Be service providers who support our service or other Facebook products you use.
This license ends when your content is deleted from our systems.
You can delete content individually or all at once (by deleting your account).
Learn more about how to delete your account.
You can always download a copy of your data before deleting your account.
If you delete content, it is no longer visible to other users.
However, it is possible that it is still present elsewhere in our systems if
immediate deletion is not possible due to technical restrictions (in this case your content will be deleted within a maximum of 90 days after deletion by you);
your content has already been used by others in accordance with this license and they have not deleted it (in which case this license will apply until the content is deleted); or
the immediate deletion would restrict us in the following measures:
Investigate or detect illegal activity or violations of our Terms of Use and Policies (e.g. to detect or investigate misuse of our products or systems);
Fulfillment of a legal obligation, e.g. B. Preservation of Evidence; or
Fulfilling a request from a judicial or administrative body, law enforcement agency or public authority;
in such a case, the content will only be maintained for as long as is necessary for the purposes on which the maintenance is based (the exact duration depends on the individual case).
In all of the above cases, this license continues to apply until the content has been completely deleted.
Consent to the use of your name, your profile picture and information about your actions with advertisements and sponsored content: You give us consent, your name and your profile picture and information about actions you have taken on Facebook, without any compensation for you besides or in connection with advertisements, offers and other sponsored content that we display in our products.
For example, we can let your friends know that you are interested in a promoted event or that you “Like” a page created by a brand that paid us to show their ads on Facebook.
Ads like this can only be seen by people who have your permission to see the actions you take on Facebook.
Learn more about your advertising settings and advertising preferences.
Authorization to update the software you have used or downloaded: If you download or use our software, you give us authorization to download and install any software updates that may be available.
Restrictions on Using Our Intellectual Property
If you use content that is protected by our intellectual property rights and make it available in or on our products (e.g. images, designs, videos or sounds that you have created or created on Facebook by us If you add shared content), we retain all rights to that content (but not to your content).
You may only use our copyrights or trademarks (or similar symbols) if this is expressly permitted by our trademark usage guidelines or if this is done with our prior written consent.
You must obtain our written consent (or consent under an open source license) to modify our source code, create derivative works from it, decompile it, or otherwise attempt to extract it.
4. Additional Terms
Update of our terms of use
We are continuously working to improve our services and develop new features to make our products even better for you and our community.
Therefore, we may need to update these Terms of Use from time to time so that they accurately and accurately reflect our services and practices.
We will only make changes if the provisions are no longer applicable or if they are incomplete, and only if the changes are reasonable for you and take your interests into account accordingly.
We will notify you at least 30 days in advance (e.g. by email or through our products) before we make changes to these Terms of Use, unless the changes are required by law.
You will then have the opportunity to review them before they take effect.
As soon as updated terms of use come into effect, you are bound by them if you continue to use our products.
We hope that you will continue to use our products.
However, if you do not agree to our updated terms of use and no longer want to be part of the Facebook community, you can delete your account at any time.
Suspension or Termination of Accounts
We want Facebook to be a place where people feel welcome and safe to express themselves and share their thoughts and ideas.
If we discover that you have obviously, seriously or repeatedly violated our terms of use or guidelines, including in particular our community standards, we can temporarily block your account or permanently disable access to it.
We may also suspend or deactivate your account if you repeatedly infringe another person's intellectual property rights or if we are legally obliged to do so.
Should we take such action, we will inform you accordingly and explain what options you have to request an examination, unless the notification on our part could lead to legal liability for us or others, damage our community, the integrity or impair or disrupt the operation of any of our services, systems or products or we are prevented from doing so by technical restrictions or we are prohibited from doing so for legal reasons.
You can find out more about what to do if your account has been deactivated and how to contact us if you think we have deactivated your account by mistake.
If you delete your account or we deactivate it, these terms of use end as an agreement between you and us, but the following provisions remain in effect: 3.3.1, 4.2 to 4.5.
Limitations of Liability
No part of these Terms of Use is intended to exclude or limit our liability for death, personal injury, or fraudulent misrepresentation caused by our negligence, or to affect your statutory rights.
We take the necessary care in providing our products and services to you and in maintaining a safe, secure, and error-free environment.
Provided that we have acted with professional diligence, we will not be responsible for any loss that is not caused by a breach of these Terms of Use on our part or otherwise by our actions, for any loss suffered by you and us under normal circumstances at the time these Terms of Use were agreed were not foreseeable and for events beyond our reasonable control.
Disputes
We try to provide clear rules so that we can limit or avoid any disputes between you and us.
However, should a dispute arise, it is helpful to know in advance where it can be settled and which laws will apply.
If you are a consumer and have your permanent residence in a member state of the European Union, the laws of that member state apply to any claim, subject matter or dispute that you have against us and that arise from these Terms of Use or from the Facebook products or in connection with them thus results ("claim").
You can have your claim clarified in any court in this member state that is competent for the claim.
In all other cases, you agree that the claim will be resolved by a competent court in Ireland and that these Terms of Use and any claim will be governed by Irish law, regardless of any conflict of law provisions.
miscellaneous
These Terms of Use (formerly the "Statement of Rights and Obligations") constitute the entire agreement between you and Facebook Ireland Limited in relation to your use of our products.
They replace all previous agreements.
Some of the products we offer are also subject to supplementary terms of use.
If you use such products, you will be given the opportunity to agree to additional terms of use, which will then become part of our agreement with you.
For example, if you access or use our products for commercial or business purposes, e.g. B. to book advertisements, sell products, develop apps, manage a group or page for your company or use our measurement services, you must agree to our terms and conditions for commercial use.
If you post or share content that contains music, you must adhere to our music guidelines.
If any additional terms of use contradict these terms of use, the additional terms of use apply to the extent of the contradiction.
If any part of these Terms of Use is found to be unenforceable, the remaining provisions will remain in full force and effect.
Failure on our part to enforce provisions of these Terms of Use does not constitute a waiver of rights.
Any change or waiver of these Terms of Use must be made in writing and signed by us.
You may not transfer any of the rights to which you are entitled under these Terms of Use or any of the obligations incumbent on you to others without our consent.
You can designate a person (called the estate contact) to manage your account when it is commemorated.
Only your probate contact or someone you named in a valid will or similar document expressing your unequivocal consent to disclosure of your content in the event of death or incapacity can request disclosure of your account after it has been commemorated .
These terms of use do not grant any third party any preferential rights.
All rights and obligations that we have under these terms of use are freely assignable by us in the context of a merger, takeover, sale of assets or by operation of law or otherwise.
Be aware that in certain circumstances we may need to change the username for your account (for example, if someone else claims the username and it doesn't seem to be related to the name you use in everyday life).
If this is the case, we will inform you in advance and explain the reasons.
We always welcome your feedback and other suggestions regarding our products and services.
However, you should know that we can use them for you without any limitation or obligation to compensate you and that we are under no obligation to keep them confidential.
5. Other terms and conditions that may apply to you
Community Standards: These guidelines explain our standards for the content you post on Facebook and what you do on Facebook and other Facebook products.
Conditions for commercial use: These conditions apply if you also use our products for commercial or business purposes, including advertising, running an app on our platform, using our services for measurements, managing a group or page for a company or selling goods or Services, uses or accesses them for this purpose.
Advertising Policies: These guidelines set out what types of advertising content are allowed from partners who advertise on the Facebook products.
Self-Serve Ads Terms of Use: These Terms of Use apply when you create, submit, or deliver advertising or other commercial or sponsored activities or content using the Self-Serve Ads user interfaces.
Page, Group, and Event Guidelines: These guidelines apply when you create or manage a Facebook Page, group, or event, or when you use Facebook to communicate or organize a marketing campaign.
Facebook platform guidelines: These guidelines set out the regulations that apply to your use of our platform (e.g. for developers or operators of a platform app or website or if you use social plugins).
Developer Payment Terms: These terms apply to developers of apps using Facebook Payments.
Community Payment Terms: These terms apply to payments made on or through Facebook.
Trading Policies: These guidelines set out the rules that apply when you offer products and services for sale on Facebook.
Facebook Brand Resources: These guidelines set out the rules that govern the use of Facebook trademarks, logos, and screenshots.
Music Guidelines: These guidelines set out the rules that apply when you post or share content with music on Facebook.
Live Guidelines: These guidelines apply to all content broadcast on Facebook Live.
Terms of Use for Messaging Services Relevant to Users in the EU, EEA and UK: The Terms of Use applicable to the messaging, voice and video calling services included in the Facebook Products are here and here at Listed in accordance with EU rules.
Date of last revision: December 20, 2020