Last chance (ever?) to vote on Facebook privacy

18 hrs.

Helen A.S. Popkin

The clock ran down on your latest???and quite possibly your last???opportunity to vote on Facebook policy changes.?

The vote, which closed at noon PT on Monday, invited users to say "yea" or "nay" on some more?changes to?how Facebook shares user info, handles email, integrates user info with Instagram, the social?photo app it now owns. This vote, or lack there of, also decides whether Facebook should continue the vote system that allows users to vote?? a practice it first launched in 2009 to a continually?underwhelming?response.

According to Facebook rules, 30 percent?of 1?billion?active users must vote either way for the social network to consider the result as anything more than advisory. That's a high bar, since 30 percent of 1 billion is 300 million.

That's?only?slightly less than the entire population of the United States. You would need to almost triple all of the people who voted in?the last U.S. presidential election. The requirement is amazingly high, though bear in mind, unlike voting for the next president, Facebook users don't even have to brave the weather???or even leave the house???to cast a ballot.

Facebook "has outgrown the current system, which is no longer the most effective way to help people engage in our site governance process,"?Elliot Schrage, Facebook's vice president, communications, public policy and marketing, wrote last week,?introducing the latest vote on the?Facebook Governance Page.

Outgrown? Did it ever really work?

As of Monday afternoon, 668,872 Facebook users had voted, and overwhelmingly against the latest policy changes, but still a long way from 300 million (Final results will be announced Tuesday).?Still, it's better than the previous policy change earlier this year, when only?342,632 users voted.?

Facebook emailed users about its latest policy change three weeks ago, and response was quick, but misguided. As NBC News reported, ?some users suspected the email was yet another spam scam attacking through the social network. Others who failed to read the email for comprehension, if at all, retaliated by cutting and pasting a status update that declared they weren't bound by Facebook's user agreement ? an act that has absolutely no legal standing.

What a lot of users didn't do is?actually take the time to vote. ?Read about Facebook's proposed changes in full here.?

This post was updated at 9:07 p.m. ET on Dec. 10 to reflect that voting closed?and thesocial?network's?preliminary tally.

Helen A.S. Popkin goes blah blah blah about privacy and then asks her to join her on?Twitter?and/or?Facebook. Also,?Google+.?Because that's how she rolls.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/last-chance-ever-vote-facebook-privacy-1C7511814

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