In one week starting Friday June 1 at 9.00 am, and ending on June 8 at the same time, Facebook users can vote on proposed changes to the company's privacy policy.
Max Schrems, the Austrian founder of the privacy activist group known as Europe vs. Facebook, urged followers to paste more than the required number of comments needed to spark the eliciting of votes for previously announced policy changes. The activist group is demanding more widespread changes than those that were announced.
Users will be notified of the opportunity to vote, and if 30% of the active users of almost 900 million, vote to accept the changes, they will be adopted.
Facebook will also consider taking the changes "under advisory", and cites that many of the comments received appeared to be blindly pasted without much thought or insight.
The proposed changes include information on how the information in your profile is used. There is also information on the new feature known as the Timeline.
It is the second time in the history of the company that Facebook' site governance vote on proposed changes to its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities and Data Use Policy will take place. The voting system was installed in 2009, when they were only 200 million users, but with a much larger base of users, the company is now considering an increase in the number of comments or perhaps even eliminating the voting procedure. It may be the last time that users will be allowed to vote.
A new system, where the users would be required to review proposed changes, and offer opinions of value, such as those required with the installation of new software or the End User License Agreement, may also be considered.
The activist group Europe vs. Facebook was partly responsible for a previous audit of Facebook's privacy policy by the Irish Data Protection Commissioner. The audit resulted in many of the present policies, and Facebook says it is difficult to understand why the group is obstructing implementation of policies for which they lobbied.
The group insists that users should be allowed the option to Opt-In rather than be forced to Opt-out of using the system and certain features. "We want Facebook to limit the use of our data for advertisement," the group said. Some users have previously stated the policy may not be transparent enough or even properly understood.
Facebook claims that changes proposed by Europe vs Facebook would seriously hinder the ability to install new features and generate revenue.
Proposed changes can be found at Facebook's Statement of Rights and Responsibilities and the Data Use Policy, along with an explanation of the changes .
