Facebook's Site Governance Vote: A Massive Con?
When Facebook announced it was opening its site governance to user voting late February, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg hailed it as an "unprecedented" effort to enable "participation on the Web." Here at ReadWriteWeb, we questioned whether Facebook's management had lost their grip on reality.
Late last week, Global privacy watchdog, Privacy International added its take; claiming that Facebook's Site Governance Vote is nothing more than a "publicity stunt and a massive confidence trick on its 200 million users."
In February, after revoking the changes Facebook made to its Terms of Use, Zuckerberg announced that the company was looking for user feedback on the two new documents it had published regarding site governance: the new Facebook Principles and the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (SRR).
A month and a half later, on April 12, Zuckerberg declared voting open and gave users the option to vote for either the current Terms of Use or the new Facebook Principles and SRR, which Facebook claimed had incorporated feedback from users and experts during the commenting period.
Although Zuckerberg proclaimed that Facebook "encourage you to participate and make your voice heard," there is a caveat.
"For this vote and any future one, the results will be binding if at least 30 percent of active Facebook users at the time that the vote was announced participate. An active user is someone who has logged in to the site in the past 30 days," Zuckerberg noted on his post.
And according to Privacy International, this is where the problem lies.
"While we support the concept of user participation, the idea of establishing a thirty percent participation threshold is a complete joke. It will never be reached, and Facebook knows it. Earlier this year the figure had been set at 25 percent, and it was edged up because of concerns that users might actually succeed in changing the terms and conditions," Privacy International's Director, Simon Davies claimed in a statement Friday.
In a comment left on AllFacebook, Facebook's Barry Schnitt claims that 80 percent of Facebook users return weekly. If true, it means 30 percent of those 160 million users need to participate in order for the result to be binding. 30 percent of 160 million is 48 million. As of yesterday, there were only 280,863 votes according to Nick O'Neill. Although voting is open until April 23, it seems unlikely that user votes will have any effect.
And according to Privacy International, this voting process will do little more than aggravate Facebook users who he believes will feel cheated if the threshold is not reached. "If this is a genuine attempt to give users control then give them a genuine vote, not a symbolic one; otherwise, stop wasting everyone's time," Davies said.
Privacy International's senior staff members have promised to eat their shorts if the threshold is ever reached on any vote.
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Surely this could be solved by Facebook placing a prominent red message in the user's logged in session to tell them to go and at least look at the issue to decide if they want to vote on it?
I'm an active FB user and have not seen a single thing on the FB site to tell me that there is a vote happening or in fact where to go to even read through the issues to contribute my fraction of 2c worth.
It's not a con...it's democracy. It's not Facebook's fault if users decide not to participate in it.
I think this says more about the apathy and/or indifference of most Facebook users than it does about any subterfuge on the part of the Facebook management, alas... much like in the real world.
facebook showed a prominent message on my homepage when I logged in a couple days ago telling me I could vote.
I think the reality is, the people constantly questioning the privacy issues are a minority. I tip my hat to them but the majority of users are just there to make themselves feel important for 30 minutes of the day.
It matters little. The new "rules of governance" seem little more than the old TOS, more carefully worded. All that seems to have been added is a proviso for some advance notice (like this) of changes in TOS. If advance notice involves a vote (like this) with not enough time for a significant portion of the membership, then that proviso itself is meaningless, as well. Hence, the new "rules" are meaningless. The vote is a con.
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Didn't anyone at Facebook even go to graduate school?
Hahaha....
Remarkable, that as a company they even got this far.
This kind of ridiculous business practice showcases just how short their lifespan will end up to be.
I care about FB's terms, and voting on this...never heard of this before. Why didn't they publicize it?
All this discussion and no mention of any link to the Facebook voting page. Where do we go to vote?
I log in facebook nearly every day and haven't seen any mention of the vote.
I didn't vote, and don't wish to. While I do think Facebook should have fair terms of service, and I do think user input is a good idea, I don't think there should be any attempt, faux or real, at true democracy. Facebook is a business, not a government, and certainly not a real society.
Was there a call for a vote? I'm an active (rather very frequent) Facebook user and I never got to know that such a voting process was on. Why on FB publicize it and make the voting process more genuine and active?
But,even if I voted, will my vote count? Will it make any difference? Certainly, I agree with Kathleen that FB is a business and not a government to rule/change rules according to user's whims and fancies.
Hell, only 50% of the US population even votes at the presidential elections.
Wow, that is something else isnt it!
RT
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Facebook has been a phenomenon for several years but now twitter has changed everything.
Twitter is the new thing right now,facebook has a competition from a competition from microblogging site
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I am also an active user and do not remember seeing the call for voting but I remember when the FB announced the rights to own all images it made a lot of people very angry and hence we have this "democracy" to vote. I must say constant changes on the FB made me to use the FB less and less.
I'm convinced facebook is a fad with a long tail, while i may be one of the 200 million 'users' i do not tell facebook a great deal of information for facebook to start with for them to abuse at a later date.
The art here for fb is to see if they can keep facebook a non fad - i somehow doubt they can do that.
January was when i last logged in. Stunts as to my non 'eligibility' to vote mean the vote does not matter to start with.
twitter will change everything.
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Maybe someone should write an app that reminds users of a vote.
People are freakin stupid:
1. To have ever joined facebook
2. To give facebook their data
3. To believe anything facebook says
From day 1 the company has been a PR, media spin, designed to sucker users into divulging personal information tied to a real name, all for big business manipulation, and guess what it worked.
Facebook proved that we are all indeed sheep, a world of followers. It amazes me that people even listen to Facebook's massive PR machine's spin on Terms. For God's sake, this is a company started on a theft, form a college boy (brat) swindling his friends...get a clue people!!!
For those who haven't seen the vote on Facebook: there is a large banner at the top of your Facebook feed that talks about the vote.
Jonathan Zittrain has an interesting take on this in a post on The Chronicle of Higher Education: Wired Campus.
And here is the link: http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/3721/jonathan-zittrain-a-bill-of-rights-for-the-facebook-nation
Facebook is a business, not a government, and certainly not a real society.
Publicity stunt.
Ya' think?
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With all the lawyers that would have been giving input to the corporate staff, there was no way FB could really let the users decide on the actual terms of use.
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