by Angela Guess
Somini Sengupta of the New York Times reports that the turnout for Facebook’s recent open vote regarding changes to how user data is governed was extremely low. Sengupta explains, “It has more than 900 million people. It has its own currency. And this month, for the first time, the digital republic known as Facebook held elections of a sort: it offered users a chance to vote on the way the site is governed, including how the company deploys its users’ data. Turnout was spectacularly bad in the digital republic that the writer Rebecca Mackinnon has dubbed Facebookistan. Fewer than 350,000 Facebook users voted, or under .04 percent.”
Sengupta noted, “It was not for lack of trying, Facebook said. The company said it translated the necessary documents into several languages and publicized the vote through the site. Facebook had said the vote would be binding had there been a 30 percent turnout at minimum. There was not, and the company announced that it would go ahead and adopt the proposed amendments to its site governance and data use policy. Of those who voted, a large majority said they preferred the old policies over the amendments.”
photo credit: Facebook
