Facebook will hold a vote, possibly later this week, in which it will ask users to abolish their right to vote on changes to the social networks privacy policies.
The social network announced last week that it was seeking comments on its proposal to take away its users right to vote on these sorts of changes. If 7,000 comments are received by Wednesday then Facebook will hold a referendum on the topic.
That threshold appears to have been met as of Monday morning, there were more than 12,000 comments on Facebooks English-language post which should trigger the third vote in the social networks history. If Facebook handles the vote in the same way it has in the past, it could be held later this week or next.
Facebook didnt talk to us, but they explained their reasons for asking users to abolish their right to vote in a blog post last week.
We deeply value the feedback we receive from you during our comment period, writes Elliot Schrage, Facebooks vice president for communications, public policy and marketing. In the past, your substantive feedback has led to changes to the proposals we made. However, we found that the voting mechanism, which is triggered by a specific number of comments, actually resulted in a system that incentivized the quantity over quality.
Therefore, were proposing to end the voting component of the process in favor of a system that leads to more meaningful feedback and engagement.
Under the current system, for a vote to upend one of Facebooks proposals about its privacy policy, more than 30% of users have to cast digital ballots. Since there are now more than a billion people on Facebook, that means more than 300 million people would have to vote.
Based on recent history, the chances of users reaching that 30% threshold appear slim. Therefore, it is safe to conclude that your right to vote on Facebook will be taken away.
How do you feel? Are you upset? Did you even know that Facebook has a voting system? Let us know in the comments
From CNN
