Back in February the popular social network site Facebook changed its terms and conditions to give ownership of user created images, data and video to the site. This drew major criticism from Facebook users and the social network site repealed the terms. The decision of what to do with the content of the website was put to a week-long vote and Facebook users have spoken. A preliminary count of nearly 75% of the votes went to handing control of the site’s content back to the users who created it.
Facebook’s recent vote was truly democracy in action. Simon Davies of Privacy International said the move was “unprecedented”. “No other company has made such a bold move towards transparency and democratisation,” he went on to say. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, wanted to allow Facebook’s 200 million users to participate in the future direction of Facebook but most users did not vote this time around. Only about 600,000 users, less than the 30% threshold set prior to the vote, participated but the results will be adopted anyway. The exercise was the first of its kind, but nonetheless Facebook was a little disappointed in the turnout.
Facebook does plan to employ this method in any future changes that will become binding. As it stands today, users are able to make comments about various topics relating to Facebook’s operation. If a given topic receives more than 7,000 comments a vote for change will be enacted. Zuckerberg hopes these new policies for change will bring Facebook’s community further together. This was a smart move for a website which derives almost all of its content from its members.
{ 0 comments… add one now }