Facebook has decided to open itself up to the public scrutiny. This is came as reaction to the revolt from users due to the change in Facebook’s terms of service. Moreover, the site has decided that any future changes in its terms of service and policy will be circulated to the users prior to implementation for the feedback and this would be termed as Facebook’s bill of rights and responsibilities. Mark Zuckerberg said that the document is “not just what people must do when they’re on the site… it’s also what Facebook must do. We’re going to notify everyone who wants to be notified and give them time to comment,” he said in a call with journalists earlier. In the case that a proposed change draws a high volume of response, “we’ll even put it up for a vote”.
The move comes just a few days after an embarrassing climbdown, after changes to the site’s terms of use led to outrage among many of the site’s 175m users. The concerns, over a shift in wording that appeared to give Facebook perpetual ownership to every piece of data on the site, eventually led to Zuckerberg making a drastic U-turn.
Although executives at the site said they did not intend to offend or annoy users with the earlier changes, they recognised that data ownership was a sensitive issue for many people.
Facebook’s vice president of communications and public policy, Eliot Schrage, said it was ironic that many of the blogs which criticised Facebook’s recent changes had even more.
“Because of the nature of the information our users share, we have to hold ourselves to a higher standard,” he added.
Facebook has suffered from backlashes after before – when implementing its news feed or its controversial Beacon advertising system, for example. But this latest change effectively hopes to stem future controversies in the bud by putting part of the company’s up for public approval (although Facebook will, of course, still control which issues are up for public discussion and vote)
Zuckerberg, who seemed stuck for words on a few occasions, said that although the announcement was precipitated by last week’s farce, the changes had been discussed for a “long time”.
