Voting opens on Facebook privacy changes
2012-12-04 09:12
San Francisco - Facebook invited users to cast their votes on proposed changes to the social networking site's policies, including whether future changes to privacy guidelines should be subject to user approval.
In a post on its website Facebook said that the results of the week-long voting period would be binding if more than 30% of the company's 1 billion members cast ballots.
The vote was scheduled after Facebook's proposed changes to the site's governance were attacked by privacy groups, including the Electronic Privacy Information Centre and the Centre for Digital Democracy.
Voting will end on Monday.
In a blog post in November the company said that it was reversing its 2009 policy whereby it promised to hold a vote on any site governance policy if any proposed change received more than 7 000 substantive comments.
Under that policy Facebook agreed to be bound by the results of any vote if more than 30% of all active users participated.
Facebook communications chief Elliot Schrage said the change was needed because the old rules encouraged a deluge of low-quality comments that did not necessarily represent the widespread opinion of Facebook users.
"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," Schrage said.
- SAPA
