X vs Facebook

Posting gives X a worldwide, royalty-free license to use, copy, modify, publish, distribute, and display your content in any media. This is much broader than what is strictly needed just to host your posts.

X expressly says it can analyze your content and use it to improve services, including training machine learning and AI models. Users who post may therefore help train AI systems without additional payment.

X collects the contents of Direct Messages, along with recipients, timestamps, and metadata for encrypted messages. Users should not assume ordinary messaging on the service is private from the platform.

X can let other companies, organizations, or individuals use or redistribute your content, including syndication, broadcast, and publication on other media and services. That expands downstream use beyond the platform itself.

X states you will not be paid for its use of your content or for others' licensed uses. The terms treat your ability to use the service as sufficient compensation.

X says it may collect log information even if you do not have an account or are signed out, including pages visited, search terms, ads shown, and cookie identifiers. That means tracking can extend beyond active account use.

X may associate your account with browsers, devices, email addresses, phone numbers, and signed-out identifiers to infer identity. This can make it harder to stay compartmentalized across devices or sessions.

X collects information about your interactions with ads served on X and off X, including views, clicks, and video engagement. This supports ad profiling based on behavior across contexts.

X automatically collects approximate location and can collect precise location if you enable it. Location data can be sensitive, especially when combined with activity and ad profiles.

X says you still own the content you create and post. That is better than an ownership transfer, though it is paired with a very broad license back to X.

If you use features that limit distribution to a restricted community, X says it will respect that choice. This is a useful transparency point, though it does not undo the broad underlying license.

Meta collects a very broad range of data, including activity, device details, contacts, location, cookies, and partner data, even in some cases without an account. In practice, using Facebook can involve tracking across devices, services, and third-party sites.

Your personal data is used to target and measure ads on and off Meta products. This means your behavior and inferred interests help shape advertising across Facebook's ecosystem.

You keep ownership of your posts, photos, and videos, but grant Meta a worldwide, transferable, sublicensable, royalty-free license to use and modify them for service operation. This is a broad permission that continues until content is fully deleted.

Meta can use your name, profile photo, and ad-related actions next to sponsored content without paying you. Your social activity may therefore be used to endorse ads to others who can view that activity.

Public posts and profile information can be copied, reshared, downloaded, or indexed off-platform, including by search engines and third parties. Once something is public, practical control over it can be hard to regain.

Apps and websites connected through Facebook Login or integrations may access non-public information, and may retain data you already shared even after access expires. That creates ongoing privacy exposure outside Meta's direct control.

Facebook is provided 'as is' and Meta disclaims warranties while limiting liability for indirect and consequential damages as far as law allows. If the service causes losses or disruptions, user remedies may be narrow.

The policy expressly provides rights to access, correct, download, port, erase, object, and complain to a regulator. These are meaningful user protections, especially in regions covered by data protection law.

Consumer disputes are generally governed by the law of your home country and can be brought in competent local courts. This is more user-friendly than mandatory arbitration or exclusive foreign forum clauses for consumers.

Deleting content or an account is not immediate: primary deletion may take up to 90 days, with up to another 90 days for backups, and some data may be kept longer for legal or safety reasons. Users should not expect instant erasure.

Meta says it does not sell your personal data to advertisers or share direct identifiers like your name or email without specific permission. That reduces one common privacy risk, though substantial ad profiling and reporting still occur.

Meta says it will usually give at least 30 days' notice before material terms changes take effect. That gives users some time to review changes and decide whether to keep using the service.