Facebook Changes Privacy Policies, Scraps User Voting 119
Orome1 writes "The voting period for the proposed changes to Facebook's Statement of Rights and Responsibilities and Data Use Policy has ended on Monday, and despite the email sent out to the users asking them to review the changes and cast their vote, less than one percent of all users have done so. 'An external auditor has reviewed and confirmed the final results. Of the 668,872 people who voted, 589,141 recommended we keep our existing SRR and Data Use Policy,' stated Elliot Schrage, Facebook's vice president of communications, public policy, and marketing. Still, that is not nearly enough to prevent the proposed changes — as required by Facebook, at least 30 percent of the users should have voted against them in order to keep the previous versions of the policies. Schrage pointed out that that the whole experience illustrated the clear value of Facebook's notice and comment process."
haha (Score:5, Insightful)
Schrage pointed out that that the whole experience illustrated the clear value of Facebook's notice and comment process.
It certainly succeeded in illustrating the value that process had, yes.
Re:haha (Score:5, Insightful)
If Facebook cared about users voting, there would have been a notice every time you log on and an interstitial notice every X pages you clicked through.
Then again, there's no apathy like online apathy.
Re:haha (Score:5, Insightful)
If they cared at all about people voting, they would've had a longer time frame than 2 days, and they would've used Facebook, not email to get the word out that you can vote on it. Most people I know don't even remember the password, much less check, the email account associated with facebook.
30%??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are 30% of FB users even active? How about the number of people with more than one account? What about people like my grandfather who only gets on FB to view updates and pictures from the dozen family that comprise his entire friend list?
I assert that it is not even possible to get a response from 30% of FB users, especially with a passive voting process like this that requires the user to actively seek out and find where to vote. Maybe, just maybe, if FB would have put it right in front of the user's faces, where it was a popup message that has to be dismissed, then maybe up to 15-20% would participate.
Re:haha (Score:2, Insightful)
If Facebook cared about users voting, there would have been a notice every time you log on and an interstitial notice every X pages you clicked through.
Then again, there's no apathy like online apathy.
Unlike here at Slashdot where user voting on their privacy policies is so important that... hey, wait a minute...
This proves the shocking truth. (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, and 99% (at least) of 14-year-old girls and spam bots don't care about Facebook's privacy policies.
Re:Why do people put up with Facebook? (Score:4, Insightful)
And this story, just like any other, fails to actually enumerate the changes are. Why? Because the changes, really, aren't a big deal at all.
https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-site-governance/explanation-of-changes/10152338051340301 [facebook.com]
The only technical thing they're changing is the voting mechanism, which, as this shows, is pretty much broken. It was ok when Facebook was maybe 1000 people at a couple of US colleges, but since it requires a quorum of 30%, it's pretty much useless now.
Everything else is basically a language change to provide clarification of existing policies, not an actual change of policies. And if you look at the comments on those posts, it's almost all people copy-and-pasting the same fake pseudo-legalese crap about ownership of data. If any of the people posting them had bothered reading the thing they were posting on, they'd see that Facebook has no intention of claiming ownership of posted content.
So, all in all, it's a storm in a teacup, magnified by people who make money from faux outrage.
Re:haha (Score:5, Insightful)
They probably don't care, and just didn't see a point in putting effort into bugging people. The reality is that its virtually impossible to get 30% of all Facebook users to even vote, let alone in agreement. In fact from stats I've seen, I don't even think 30% of facebook 'users' are active, let alone in the two day time frame they gave. Or put another way, if ever single user who logged into facebook during the vote had votes the same way, they'd be we'll short of the 30% requirement. The whole vote was just lip service to caring about what users think.
Re:Good Grief. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's a large enough sample size. (Score:3, Insightful)
This wasn't a random sample.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)