Facebook made a commitment some weeks back to open up its policy-making process to us humble users. This included a vote on any big changes. That vote has now arrived as promised but the chances of a user-led victory are somewhat remote. Zuckerberg the dictator has done it again.

Back in February, Facebook all of a sudden and completely without warning changed its Terms of Service. It took a while for anyone to actually notice but once they did, a mess of trouble began which is only now being resolved.

The issues many people had with the new ToS was that Facebook was essentially laying claim to everything you did or said on the site… forever. The old ToS did the same to a certain extent but the new ones made it clear Facebook owned you, and this situation would continue even if you deleted your account and disappeared into the ether.

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, first defended the changes claiming they were designed to simplify and streamline everything. This didn’t do much to quell the rage in the Facebook community and the media coverage was anything but polite towards Facebook and Zuckerberg.

Facebook then backed down, acknowledged these changes had annoyed a lot of people, and reverted back to the old ToS for the time being. Members were first asked to give their opinions on the ToS and policy changes, and now a vote has been announced which could see the Facebook faithful decide on how to proceed.

The vote was announced in a Facebook blog post by Zuckerberg himself. He states the option all Facebook users have open to them.

You will have two options on the ballot: 1) the new Facebook Principles and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (SRR), which incorporate feedback from users and experts received during the 30-day comment period, or 2) the current Terms of Use, which were developed by Facebook and did not go through an outside comment period.

In essence, this is a vote for a set of policies framed by Facebook but tinkered with after an open debate, and a set of policies written behind closed doors by Facebook. Loving the idea of a democracy, however stifled it may be, I’d love to see the user-led SRR win. But I doubt it will.

The problem is that Facebook has put certain rules in place which look sure to ensure the current Terms of Use win. The results of the vote will only count if “30 percent of active Facebook users at the time that the vote was announced participate.” Facebook recently announced it had gained its 200 millionth user meaning we’re looking at needing 60 million people to cast their vote in order for this democracy to mean anything.

The vote is only set to last a week from when it was opened on Thursday, and let’s face it, 60 million Facebook users are not going to vote in that time. What’s more, if this vote doesn’t carry through the SRR then the commitment to have voting in future evaporates completely to be replaced by a weak promise to “still find ways to involve you in the governance process.”

Is Facebook a democracy? Maybe on paper, but one that has a dictator working the process in his favor in order to stay in charge.

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Entry was posted on Sunday, April 19th, 2009 at 1:36 am under Internet, Opinion, Social Media.

Read more entries by Dave Parrack.
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