The Rise of the Facebook Democracy

• Feb 27th, 2009
• Posted by Feran
• Posted in Social Media

In an effort to smooth over the terms of service policy chaos that went down earlier this month, the social networking site Facebook has adopted a new and rather democratic user voting process.

The swell of negative responses Facebook received regarding the change of its policy which stated that it had ownership of all users’ content eventually pushed the social networking site to revert back to the original version.

Then yesterday the company announced the “Facebook Principles,” which are, “a set of values that will guide the development of the service, and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities that make clear Facebook’s and users’ commitments related to the service.”

In short, Facebook will now notify users prior to making major changes in its policy among a long list of other things. Facebook is also inviting the community to review, comment and vote on the proposed Principles. You can read it all here and leave your two cents if you’d like.

Just one day into the public announcement of these new Principles and the Facebook discussion board has already been flooded with hundreds of contradicting opinions and concerned comments as well as a group membership nearing 10,000 people. Best yet, the company stated that they are going to let this online town hall forum continue for an entire thirty days.

After the thirty days, Facebook will review all comments, take them into consideration and then republish the Principles with added changes. To get an idea of posts to come, and perhaps a good warning, one Facebook user states, “…..Having people ‘vote’ on terms can only lead to havoc.”

 I guess we’ll just have to wait and see if all Facebook hell breaks loose or if indeed the people speak and are heard. In the meantime, wait a few more weeks before posting your Mardi Gras pics.