Facebook intends to abolish the user voting process when it comes to site governance changes.
The voting system has been in place for four years and holds that if a proposed change garners over 7 000 comments, then all users are given the chance to vote on it. Following that, if more than 30% of users vote for or against the changes, the final verdict is binding.
Facebook's VP of communications, public policy and marketing, Elliot Schrage, says: "Our goal has always been to find ways to effectively engage your views when we propose changes to our governing policies. That commitment guided our decision in 2009 to launch an unprecedented process for user feedback."
Schrage says when Facebook held its second global site governance vote, in June, the company indicated it would review the site governance process "in light of the growth of both our community - to over one billion users - and our company - which is now publicly traded and accountable to regulators around the world".
"In the past, your substantive feedback has led to changes to the proposals we made. However, we found that the voting mechanism, which is triggered by a specific number of comments, actually resulted in a system that incentivised the quantity of comments over their quality. Therefore, we're proposing to end the voting component of the process in favour of a system that leads to more meaningful feedback and engagement."
Facebook proposes that it will continue to post significant changes to its Data Use Policy and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, and will provide a seven-day period for review and comment.
"As always, we will carefully consider your feedback before adopting any changes. We will also provide additional notification mechanisms, including e-mail, for informing you of those changes."
Schrage adds that Facebook will also roll out a new "Ask the Chief Privacy Officer" feature, which will allow users to submit questions on privacy to chief privacy officer of policy Erin Egan. Egan will also host Web casts on a regular basis to address comments and concerns.
Unified profiles
In addition to the changes to the site governance process, Facebook also proposes changes to its Data Use Policy, which would allow it to combine user data with other businesses or affiliates such as Instagram.
It has also been noted that the change to the Data Use Policy could allow Facebook to build unified profiles for users that pull data from both the social network and Instagram. This follows Google's announcement early this year that it would unify user data from across its services. At the time, Google was criticised by privacy activists for putting its users at greater risk of identity theft and hacking by consolidating so much personal information.
The new proposal would also see a loosening of restrictions on the internal e-mail system - essentially doing away with the "Who can send you Facebook messages" option and replacing it with new filtering mechanisms for incoming messages.
Reuters quotes Facebook spokesperson Andrew Noyes as saying the company will carefully monitor user interaction and feedback on the changes to the e-mail system in order to avoid a flood of spam-like messages.
"We are working on updates to Facebook Messages and have made this change in our Data Use Policy in order to allow for improvements to the product," Noyes said.
Facebook currently has over a billion users, and is constantly under scrutiny from privacy regulators. The social network settled privacy charges with the US Federal Trade Commission in April, and is now required to get user consent for certain changes to its privacy settings. It is also subject to 20 years of independent audits.
Schrage says of the new proposed changes: "You have a chance to review and comment on these changes before we adopt them. Please leave any comments by 9:00 AM PST on 28 November 2012.
"Once the comment period is over, we will be hosting a Facebook Live, where Erin Egan will respond to your comments live."
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