Facebook Plans to Revamp by Abolishing Users Right to Vote

Facebook has always been plagued by issues regarding its privacy updates with some of them becoming very controversial. The social network rolled out its present site governance model in 2009 which facilitated the users to vote on the issues that rose out of Facebook"s privacy updates. However, now Facebook plans to do away with the system by paving way for a newer one stating that the site had outgrown the previous model.

At present, if more than 7000 'substantive comments" are obtained for the proposed privacy update; the users are given the right to vote on the issue. If more than 30% of the Facebook users vote on the issue, the result of the vote will be binding. However, this triggered a lot of copy-paste comments posted by privacy activists.

The new system would emphasize on receiving high quality feedback rather than just votes. This would prevent the copy-pasting process. Facebook said that the old system was being done away with owing to the fact that it gave importance to the quantity of the comments rather than quality. The social networking site is, therefore, going to propose a system which will end the voting process and give way for an improved model based on substantial feedback and engagement from the users.

Changes to the Data Use Policy of the site are also being proposed. Data Use Policy explains how the site can use the data available from the user. Facebook is also expected to start a section soon where users can directly submit their queries about privacy policy to Erin Egan, chief privacy officer of policy for Facebook.