Facebook Forced By Privacy Activist To Put Policy Changes Up For Worldwide Vote

Max Schrems, the Austrian founder of Europe Vs. Facebook, successfully forced Facebook to put proposed policy changes up for a vote by all its users by mobilizing his privacy group to flood Facebook's Site Governance page with many more than 7,00o comments on the proposal -- the threshold for triggering a vote. Today the one-week voting period opens on a set of a relatively benign changes and Facebook will notify users by web and mobile. If over 30% of Facebook's active users, or 230 million people, vote for the changes they'll go into effect, and if they vote against they'll be scrapped. Otherwise Facebook will take the changes "under advisory". Facebook's Chief Privacy Officer for Policy Erin Egan told me yesterday the company will consider changing its site governance voting system to discourage meddling and adapt to the growing size of Facebook's user base.

activists austrian comments egan erin europe facebook governance max policy privacy schrems