It looks like Facebook is on a path that might not go down well with many people, as the social network giant proposes to ditch its policy which enables members to vote on changes that it makes in terms of data use policy. Facebook Vice President for Communications, Public Policy and Marketing Elliot Schrage promised that the company still values user input on company policy, but declared that the “voting mechanism, which is triggered by a specific number of comments, actually resulted in a system that incentivized the quantity of comments over their quality.”
Current rules work this way – proposed changes on the receiving end of over 7,000 comments will automatically trigger a vote on those changes, and assuming 30% of Facebook’s members (which number around one billion) take part in that vote, then Facebook ought to abide by the results of that vote. Proposed rules will work otherwise, where members are given a week by Facebook to comment on a policy change. Once the comment period is over, any changes adopted will be reflected by a user notification. Basically, that means a dictatorship in certain aspects of Facebook. Bummer!
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