Although a number of popular websites have, without a doubt, already put tremendous efforts in protecting their users’ privacies, there are still some that seem to have the desire to keep that power that they hold over the privacies of their users.
And it appears that Twitter’s Periscope is one of them.
Periscope CEO Kayvon Beykpour admitted in an interview with the Evening Standard that they keep their users’ videos even after they have already been deleted from the users’ accounts.
Beykpour says this is mainly because they haven’t really thought about how long the videos should be staying on their servers.
“We haven’t made any decisions around how long we keep them,” the Periscope CEO told the Evening Standard.
Troubling as this may sound, reports say that what’s even more concerning apart from the fact that the site still keeps videos that users have already decided to delete— is the fact that the company reserves the right to do whatever it is that they want to do with their users’ videos, whenever they please.
In the site’s terms and conditions, Periscope says that they reserve the right to copy, display, distribute, publish, and reproduce its users’ videos— and apparently even without the users’s express permission.
According to Periscope’s terms and conditions, the company has:
“worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed)”.
This means that Periscope can retrieve its users’ videos and do whatever it is that they desire to do with them, and in no way is the company obliged to compensate their users for doing so.
Periscope has gained tremendous popularity among social media users in a short period of time mainly due to the fact that it allows users to broadcast mainly whatever it is that they want to broadcast— with some users even using the live-streaming app to help others view copyrighted materials.
On top of these, the app also raises concerns about how seedy users can easily use the platform to broadcast inappropriate contents such as pornography.
But according to the company’s CEO: “I personally haven’t seen people having sex on Periscope but a lot of time people are testing to see if we allow porn and filming pornography on their computer screens.”
“I would say we have nearly eradicated it.”
