THUNDER BAY – Do you use Facebook? While most of the billion or so users of the social media site are simply sharing information with their friends, and associates, there is an entirely different side to the web service from a business perspective. The company has been performing on the stock market at well under what many thought would happen to shares.
Last week, Facebook posted on what the companies plans are for changes in the future. “We are proposing some updates to two documents which govern our site: our Data Use Policy, which explains how we collect and use data when people use Facebook, and our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (SRR), which explains the terms governing the use of our services. These updates provide more detailed information about our practices, reflect changes to our products, and improve how we conduct our site governance process”.
For lots of Facebook users, there is confusion over just how much say they have. How many times has there been a post asking for a ‘Dislike’ button for example. One of the changes Facebook are proposing is on how to improve the engagement of their user’s views.
Facebook state: “Improving the Site Governance Process: Our goal has always been to find ways to effectively engage your views when we propose changes to our governing policies. That commitment guided our decision in 2009 to launch an unprecedented process for user feedback. When we held our second global site governance vote in June, we indicated that we would review our site governance process in light of the growth of both our community – to over one billion users – and our company – which is now publicly traded and accountable to regulators around the world. Our intention was to make sure the process still served its original purpose.
“As a result of this review, we are proposing to restructure our site governance process. We deeply value the feedback we receive from you during our comment period. 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 of comments over their quality. Therefore, we’re proposing to end the voting component of the process in favor of a system that leads to more meaningful feedback and engagement”.
Facebook is seeking to end their voting process.
We will continue to post significant changes to our Data Use Policy and SRR and provide a seven-day period for review and comment. As always, we will carefully consider your feedback before adopting any changes. We will also provide additional notification mechanisms, including email, for informing you of those changes. In the coming weeks, we will roll out new ways of responding to your questions and comments about Facebook. These include:
• Ask the Chief Privacy Officer. We’ll be launching a new feature on our Facebook and Privacy Page to let you submit questions about privacy to our Chief Privacy Officer of Policy, Erin Egan.
• Facebook Live Events. Erin Egan will host webcasts on a regular basis to address your comments and questions about privacy, safety and security.
Other Proposed Updates: The Data Use Policy also includes updates that provide more descriptions about our practices and reflect changes to our products, including:
• New tools for managing your Facebook Messages – replacing the “Who can send you Facebook messages” setting with new filters for managing incoming messages.
• Changes to how we refer to certain products, like instant personalization.
• Reminders about what’s visible to other people on Facebook. For instance, when you hide things from your timeline, those posts are visible elsewhere, like in news feed, on other people’s timelines, or in search results.
• Tips on managing your timeline. For example, you can use tools on your timeline or activity log to delete your own posts, or you can ask someone else to delete a post in which you’re tagged.
Facebook adds, “We encourage you to read through all the proposed changes under the “Documents” tab of our Site Governance Page. You have a chance to review and comment on these changes before we adopt them. Please leave any comments by 9:00 AM PST on November 28, 2012.” The address to leave posts is on the Facebook website.
