More Changes to Facebook Policies

Because of its population size, social media types often like to compare Facebook to large countries.  Well, if Facebook really were a country, we’d likely be hearing news stories about the behemoth’s recent move to end its experiment with digital democracy.  In 2009, after coming under criticism for some of its privacy policies, Facebook decided that it would let users vote on any policy change that received more than 7,000 substantive comments.  The 7,000 comment threshold is pretty low for a 1 billion+ networking site and the “trigger” has been pulled three times – resulting in three “elections.”  The catch in all of this has been that the vote is only binding if at least 30% of Facebook’s users vote.  If less than 30% vote, the results are merely advisory.

So, the most recent election just happened…and guess what it was about…

Whether or not Facebook should continue to use a democratic vote on policy changes…

Well, the votes are in, and while more people voted against the change than voted for it, the vote did not cross the 30% threshold.  So, the company is changing the rules and has announced that it will no longer allow voting on policy changes.

For many this move is meaningless.  Because voters have never come close to 30% participation, some have claimed that Facebook only ever offered phony democracy.  This shift only represents the firm publically stating what has always been the case.  Others say that, even if the move is largely symbolic, it is terrible symbolism.  Since it’s so hard to get to 30%, why bother eliminating voting? Why not just raise the 7,000 comment threshold to a more reasonable number?

Facebook seems to argue that such low democratic participation only indicates that something is very wrong with the system, and while they are changing the policy they are still interested in maintaining the “participatory nature of [their] site.”  I’m not really sure how they plan to do that.

So, along with ending the vote, Facebook is making a few more changes.  They are adding privacy shortcuts include a “Who can see my stuff?” pop up and a feature to allow users to easily block other users.  However, what Facebook giveth it also taketh away…  The company is eliminating users’ ability to hide their timeline from a search. 

It seems to me like we’ll be seeing a lot more changes coming soon and I really hope that people begin speaking up at some point.  I’ve heard this old and factually untrue wives tale about a frog in a pot.  The idea is that if you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, it would jump right out.  However, if you put it in a pot of cool water and gradually warm the water, the frog will be lulled and eventually cook to death.  I sure hope that we aren’t all frogs…

Nicole