You're Participating In The Facebook Terms Of Service Vote, Right?
You've got about a day and a half left to cast your vote for which Terms of Service you'd prefer Facebook go with—the one written in September 2008 without user input, or the new one they've drafted over the last month based on suggestions from the Facebook community.
Here's the interesting thing, though: Facebook is calling the Internet's collective bluff on being concerned about this. To avoid what one might call the tyranny of the easily outraged—to keep from making a major policy change because of some perfect storm of Twitter, Consumerist, and the mass media—they're requiring that at least 30% of active users in the past month participate in the vote for it to count.
We don't think that's entirely unreasonable; after all, if you care about this, it's painless and quick to cast a vote either way. It creates a huge obstacle to overcome, however. As of tonight—about 40 or so hours before the the voting ends—only 300,000 users have cast their vote. For the vote to count, somewhere between 60 and 70 million users will need to vote. Um, yeah.
Here's what you're voting for.
| Old Terms of Service This was the fine print from last September, before the February change that caused all the trouble. Facebook created it without input from users. It's what's currently being used. |
vs |
Revised Statement of Rights and Responsibilities Facebook Principles These are two complementary docs drafted after receiving user feedback. Together they would replace the old Terms of Service. Generally speaking, the "Rights and Responsibilities" doc is the legally binding one that would function as the new terms of service. Among other things, it states explicitly that Facebook only claims the right to use your content to make backups, or to share it with people/apps that you approve of, or stuff like that. In other words, they don't mean "license" in the sense of selling your party photos to a manufacturer to slap onto t-shirts and lunchboxes. If users successfully vote this document into effect, future changes to it will be publicized and voted on in a similar fashion. You'll need to become a fan of the Facebook Governance Page to receive updates when this happens. (We're probably not going to write about it every single time!) The "Facebook Principles" is more of a code of conduct statement that provides a shared platform from which any future terms will be created. It serves as a sort of window into the Facebook decision-making process, and provides some transparency into how and why Facebook comes up with any future policies. |
Facebook may have set the threshhold too high at 30% of global users considering the original pushback came from the U.S. audience, but 300,000 is an embarrassingly low number for something so many people seemed to be so upset about. Our prediction: the vote will be declared invalid due to underparticipation, and Facebook will be able to say "Well, we tried, and nobodyreally cared," and go back to the legalese practically every other site uses. And if less than half a million out of 200 million registered users bother to vote, then they may have a point.
"Facebook Site Governance Vote" [Facebook] (Thanks to everyone who sent this in over the past several days!)
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Comments:
and really, how many of FB's users are fake accounts created by nigerians to scam people selling stuff in the marketplace?
i put a guitar, car, and a half dozen schoolbooks up there at different times and would get like 10+ messages a day from some shithead trying to scam me into sending them my item for free or giving them all my personal info. it was always the same message, same typos, same grammar...just different names from all over the US and canada.
There is zero chance they get to that 30% of active users in past month number.
f*ck FAKEBOOK AKA FACISTBOOK
Voted for the new TOS. To their credit, they are very clear on which is which and don't bog the choices down with legal speak.
I'm not allowed to vote, as I just joined recently.
Maybe I missed it, but I don't recall seeing it on my feed which is pretty much the page I look at when I log into Facebook. You have to go to Facebook's page to find it.
"4.4 You will not use Facebook if you are a convicted sex offender."
Right, because being a registered sex offender means you are a horrible perverted boil upon society assuredly using the service only to further your corruptive desires.
I'm abstaining from this vote.
this is not going to pass becasue everyone only gave a crap while it was cool to give a crap. very few people actually care about this.
Is it that people don't care, or people don't know? I had no clue this vote was happening.
This is an interesting example of a false dilemma. I actually voted for the old TOS, because while the new one is written in clear English, it's much more open to interpretation at Facebook's discretion, in ways that could be problematic for users. However, by presenting a forced choice between the legalese with better terms or a plain-English version with more loopholes and user restrictions, it seems pretty clear that the users are mostly opting for the new version.
I don't think they're advertising this vote enough. It only showed up once in my news feed a few days ago, and I didn't have the time to read it over and actually completely forgot about it until now, seeing it again on the Consumerist. My vote is in.
This vote is a total sham. I'm constantly logged into my Facebook account, yet I have not heard about this vote until I read it here on Consumerist.com.
How can Facebook users vote if Facebook isn't informing their users about the vote.
What a load of crap!!!
This is why companies dont ask for users opionions a lot of the time. It is becasue most users are too uninformed and uneducated to make an educated vote, so they end up voting for whatever they think is popular. And no, it is not the websites job to inform users of all the normal legal stuff they include in the TOS.
@ZekeSulastin: I'm all about individual rights, but in a LOT of cases (not all! but the dangerous ones, to be sure), the situation that you sarcastically mentioned is exactly what happens. Not all. Maybe not even the majority. But the dangerous ones, and that's what matters. I'd honestly rather they draw the line somewhere than nowhere.
Now, if you want to discuss changing the sex offender laws insofar as they are unfair to first-time, mild offenders (he's 18, she's 16, whoops!), I'm totally with you. :)
I didn't know about the vote until I read this article.
@RB_Bhoy: Considering I've seen users with hundreds of friends with completely random, gibberish names, yeah. I'm going to have to call bullshit on the "active in last month" metric.
@Shadowfire: well, if the word spreads and the number of votes jumps dramatically- then we'll know.
Personally, this is the first I'd heard about it.
@Lucky225: It's not really "facist" if you willingly sign up to use a completely non-essential website.
There are more important issues out there. That said, I think this just goes to show you that most folks on the internet would rather complain than actually do something. Or that all the Facebook TOS hoopla was blown way out of proportion.
@ZekeSulastin: Actually, convicted sex offenders are overall not full of awesome. Some people might be okay with beating up hookers, but I'm not. Just because you may be convicted for something that isn't "as bad" in someone else's eyes, doesn't mean you should be allowed to freely roam amongst the public.
@The_IT_Crone: This is also the first I've heard about it. It is not on the news feed or front page that I could find. I think Facebook did this on purpose because they knew the majority of users would not seek out the vote.
Here's the thing... I tried to find the vote a few days ago, and it is not being broadcast at all by facebook. I even did a google search and couldn't find a link. Of course they don't want the new terms, they want the old terms.
This is just a dog and pony show so they can say "hey, we gave you the chance to vote but no one did, so obviously they didn't care about the TOS."
I don't have Facebook but my brother does. I emailed this to him.
@xtc46: "it is not the websites job to inform users of all the normal legal stuff they include in the TOS"
Um, yes, yes it is. When you have a facebook account, you have entered into a contract with the company that owns the site agree to do and not do certain things and in return they will do and not do certain things as well. Now, Facebook is free to put whatever they so choose in those terms and change them whenever they get the notion BUT IT IS THEIR LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY to inform everyone with an account or that contract isn't valid.
If it were a mortgage or a loan, would you be OK with them just asking for a signature and not giving you the opportunity to read the document because "it isn't their job to inform [you] of all the normal legal stuff"?
Granted, informing the users and actually making them read and comprehend it is a whole different ballgame, of course. I what you say about the voting is more often than not true.
I have Facebook and had no idea this vote was taking place. Some of my Facebook friends have had notices on top of their home page, but not me. You'd think that they might make room for it in and amongst the quizzes, ads, and other crap that is my new home page. Thanks for the heads up, Consumerist!
confusing... Considering the seriousness of the issue, wouldn't it be better to just have a big candy red button on the home page that sez, "VOTE!" Would this be too obvious?
How ever it goes the vote will NOT be close because if it was it could be open to debate and discussion. This would of course force Facebook to open its 'books', revealing the actual number of members, visits, views, etc.
Facebook's out of this world valuation(s) would melt away in the warm sunlight of documented fact.
@LostAngeles: Same here. if I hadn't seen this on Consumerist now, I wouldn't know there was a vote to be had. I don't go to Facebook's page as a general habit.
I tried to vote but was shut down. I only joined a couple of weeks ago and so am not eligible.
I be disenfranchised.
@pecan 3.14159265: I don't think that people are saying they think it's not bad to be a sex offender. I think they are saying that this "punishment for life, but only for sex crimes" stuff is ridiculous.
I didn't hear about this.
But since they do have tens of millions of e-mail addresses, why didn't they send people a notification to come out and vote?
@majin_chichi: Which is what they're counting on, of course. Funny that they'll put up "notifications" of every crappy little thing up to and including a friend of a friend taking some film quiz, but not put this up or send out PMs. I'm getting really fed up with Facebook of late.
I didn't know the vote was happening and I don't really care, I don't care what facebook does with the stuff I put on there. I wouldn't put it on there if I didn't want the public accessing it.
@undefined: @ZekeSulastin: Many states/municipalities require that offenders not even own a computer or access the Internet anywhere. If they do, they are violating their parole/probation.
Facebook is not worth the hassle.
dog meet pony *sigh*
I hadn't heard about this either. I used the link here to vote just now, but in all honesty, I don't really care. I've had Facebook for 4 years and I rarely use it to do anything but see what old friends are up to every couple of months. I don't install apps, I take down all the pictures, I don't do quizzes, I barely do anything. Sometimes I do a status update to inform people that my location has shifted by more than 500 miles, but other than that, nothing. I leave the page up to be able to check old acquaintances or to allow people who don't have my e-mail or cell to contact me if they need to, but if it gets too annoying, I'll just deactivate the account and probably not miss it at all.
Thank you for posting the link to the voting site. I've seen several mentions of the vote but no links to the site and a search in Facebook was no help.
Hey, maybe this is why the turn out is so low.
I never heard about this vote, not that I'm obsessive enough to find out about it (other than at Consumerist).
I think the *real* vote will be with people's feet - away from Facebook if they screw up again. They need only put themselves in the user's shoes and give their TOS the smell test. This fad of sites changing their TOS "contracts" like taking a daily dump should be reexamined. I don't want to play lawyer and peruse multiple contracts daily to discover and interpret the fine print, and I doubt few others do either.
It irritated me that I had to install an application to vote.
@chrylis: Even with the possible loopholes, the proposed Statement of Rights & Responsibilities still seems like the better TOS. An excerpt from the old TOS:
"By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing."
The new one at least mentions users being able to control their content with privacy settings. Another thing in the old TOS, but not in the new one is mandatory binding arbitration. While I don't think I would ever be in a position to be really damaged by Facebook, it's nice to know I can take them to court.... in California. The only thing that bothers me about the new TOS is:
"10.3 You understand that we may not always identify paid services and communications as such."
Overall the new TOS seems less restrictive to the user (with an added bonus of reduced legalese), despite the loopholes and section 10.3.
@PGibbons: Every single time Facebook has done something "stupid," its users have gotten over it in a matter or weeks. Folks may complain, create useless groups, or post angry messages (and looking at the number of people in some of these groups, the voting statistics, etc.), less than 1% of users even care about this.
If anyone "votes with their feet," it will be such an insignificant number of users that won't have any real effect.
"Unfortunately, as of tonight-about 40 or so hours before the the voting ends (it's been going on since last week), only 300,000 users have cast their vote. For the vote to count, somewhere between 60 and 70 million users tens of millions of users will need to vote (we don't know the number of active users over the past 30 days, but Facebook says they've got over 200 million users total). Yeah."
The number that Facebook publishes (200 million active users) is the number of users active in the last 30 days. So they want 30% of 200 million.
@LostAngeles: Yeah, I'm a regular user and never heard about this until just now. Holding a vote without bothering to tell anybody about it is pretty sketchy.
If I saw the vote I would assume this is a scam and wouldn't vote. I mean, really? Voting? Clicking in? This is advertising tactics and homey don't play that.
If I hadn't read it here I would have had NO idea there was a vote. It's almost like Facebook was hiding it from people. Naaah... they wouldn't do that...
I'm surprised that so many people didn't know about this. It appeared at the top of my facebook home page a few days ago, and while it's fairly nondescript, I noticed it.
I did, however, have a problem when I tried to vote. I got an error message that said they were still trying to fix the bugs or something. I tried again today and it worked fine.
i voted. pro new TOS.