Facebook User Governance About To End
Facebook’s user-governance policy is about to meet its demise, and users have nothing to blame but their own apathy. They will no longer have the ability to vote on future changes to the site because not enough votes were case in the most recent poll, which closes tomorrow.
The current vote marks the third time Facebook has allowed users to cast a ballot on proposed changes to the site, and the proposed issues included intermingling Facebook data with Instagram, as well as eliminating future user governance polls. Although so far 544,642 users have so far voted against the changes—with only 75,539 in favor—the vote will not be binding since the required 30 percent of Facebook’s active 1 billion users didn’t cast a vote. Yes, that’s correct. Unless 300 million people—almost triple the number that voted in the 2012 US presidential election—vote on Facebook’s proposed policies—the vote doesn’t count, and Facebook will merely take the poll’s results into consideration—meaning it will do what it wants.
Granted, Facebook gave users ample opportunity to cast a ballot. Not only did it email all users about the proposals, but it also let them share the fact that they voted as well as current poll results with their friends prominently in the news feed.
Will the absence of user governance really be missed, however? During the previous two votes on privacy policy changes, the minimum number of users required to vote did not cast ballots, and those results were also not binding. So in all reality, nothing will change—unless some 999,000 Facebook users decide to vote by 3 p.m. EST.
[Image via Facebook]
