Voting opens on Facebook's new terms

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Facebook has opened the voting process on its re-written terms and conditions (T&Cs) following the backlash against what many considered breaches of their privacy.

Earlier this year the social networking site introduced new T&Cs with the added clause that it owned any content that users uploaded and could use that content in whatever way it pleased.

This caused an uproar among the site's users as well as privacy campaigners and the media and it was forced to reverse the decision.

To calm the storm, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerbeg announced in February that two terms documents would be released, a set of Facebook Principles and a Statement of Rights. Users would then get the chance to vote on and the site would amend them accordingly.

He said in his blog: “Today, we take the next step in opening our site governance to everyone who uses Facebook with our first user vote. You can vote until 11:59 a.m. PDT on April 23, at which point the results will be reviewed by an independent auditor to ensure their accuracy.”

Although the voting and incorporation of users' ideas is a step forward, Facebook has also snuck in that 30 per cent of its users would have to disagree with something before it got changed. If it has broken the 200 million users mark as suspected, that is over 60 million people who need to make their voices heard.

Zuckerberg has stated though that any changes made will go through the same voting process again so if people make enough of a stand, it could have a serious impact on the way things are run.

Time to get voting, then.

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