Facebook vote ends at noon tomorrow

[cos]

Remember the Facebook scandal a few months ago when it was noticed that they had changed their Terms of Service, and among other things had removed the bit that says they lose rights to your content when you delete it?

Facebook reverted their changes and said "oops, big misunderstanging, sorry!" According to them, they'd updated it to allow them to do anything they might need to do, and they made it overly broad, allowing to do all sorts of things they didn't want to do and had no intention of ever doing. And they didn't realize people would care and get upset about that. So, they promised to ask for comments and write a new Terms of Service proposal.

Well, it's done, and you can read it here.
Now they're effectively saying "put up or shut up":

They're holding a vote: Go with this proposal, or return to the updated rules they introduced late last year that caused all the ruckus. If you had a Facebook account on February 26, 2009, and still do, then you can vote here. Voting closes at noon tomorrow, Thursday April 23nd.

And there's a catch: The vote is binding only if at least 30% of "active users" vote, where the number of "active users" is defined as the number of users who logged into Facebook in the 30 days preceding February 26th. Last I checked, only about 450,000 people had voted, which I'm pretty sure is well below the quorum.

In other words, to get the improved Terms of Service, we need more voters.

Comments

[tisiphone.livejournal.com]

Tickyboxed and publicized, thx.

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's so not going to fly if they go back to the ruckus rules due to not enough people voted since they entirely failed to make sure the appropriate folks knew about it (even if it's only sending e-mail to everyone who qualifies as an active user, for example; I know they didn't do that because I never got such an e-mail).

[cos]

They didn't email. Their notification comes in the form of a banner at the top of the homepage when you're logged in, if you haven't voted yet. They also don't exactly say what will happen if the vote ends up being "not binding".

[lecari.livejournal.com]

I haven't received any notices :/

[cos]

Did you vote? Vote is closed now, but there were still 12 minutes left when you made this comment.

[lecari.livejournal.com]

Yes, I did, before I commented. :)

[taliakit.livejournal.com]

I only saw the banner starting yesterday (the 22nd).. why did they wait so long? I'd logged in many times before that since voting opened.

[muchabstracted.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the heads-up! I hadn't managed to notice any of this.

[477150n.livejournal.com]

Done and status-ed.. thanks for the heads-up; I scanned right over the box at the top of the page.

[velouria-vegas.livejournal.com]

wow. i never saw the banner. i voted :) thanks for the heads up.

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

Done!

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

done. 511,000. You think more than 1.5 million FB users logged in in February?

[easy-living.livejournal.com]

Oh hell yes.

[carolynp.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I never noticed the banner either. they aren't exactly publicising this are they.

[mirabehn.livejournal.com]

Voted, and publicised a bit.

Stupid Facebook. :-(

[pseydtonne.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the note, as I have now vote-d. 548k people as of 4:30 am EDT.

[emarkienna.livejournal.com]

I'm a bit confused - the existing TOS (as linked from the vote) still has the line "You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the licence granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.", and doesn't have the "The following sections will survive any termination of your use of the Facebook Service" - so this doesn't look to me to be the updated rules? Or am I misunderstanding?

[hungry-pixel.livejournal.com]

22nd was yesterday so...er...missed it I guess!

[nisaba.livejournal.com]

Date rather than day was wrong, and it ends midday PDT so you can still vote!

[eirias.livejournal.com]

I think you mean Thursday April 23.

[reasdream.livejournal.com]

So, vote for the revised version, yes?
And, noon eastern or pacific?

[crs.livejournal.com]

Er, which side of the vote do you endorse?

[crs.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see now - the "existing rules" are the ones that caused the ruckus, not the ones that the ruckus got rolled back to. That makes it easy, revised rules it is.

[cos]

I believe they're currently operating under pre-ruckus rules, but it's supposed to be temporary. I'm not sure which set of rules they'd go to if the vote ends up not binding. The pre-ruckus rules used to cause a steady, low level of grumbling. They didn't make people happy, but they weren't the shock that the new rules were.

[badseed1980.livejournal.com]

It's up to 609K now, with the vast majority favoring the new user-influence TOS proposal.

[grum]

619,698. Any idea how many people are actually eligible to vote?

[cos]

I don't, but I'm sure it's more than 2 million (which is what 619k is about 30% of).

[lil-brown-bat.livejournal.com]

I may be the only person in the known universe who thinks this, but TOS's changing without notice of any kind is hardly unusual, and being allowed to vote on a TOS is (outside of this particular case) unheard of, in my experience. The indignation about the terms, I sort of get; the indignation that there are terms, and the apparent indignation over the policies regarding change and notification of same, has me baffled.

*baffled*

[cos]

The stuff that has you baffled is, as far as I can tell, stuff you've invented, and unrelated to what actually happened. However, your statements about TOSes in the first sentence are true, and neither I nor anyone I've heard/read recently has disputed any of those.

got a Facebook account?

[pingback-bot.livejournal.com]

User hammercock referenced to your post from got a Facebook account? (http://hammercock.livejournal.com/942292.html) saying: [...] Read this (http://cos.livejournal.com/67443.html), then go vote for the revised ToS by noon PST on April 23. [...]