Facebook opts for change in terms of use despite low number of votes received

After more than 600,000 users participated in the vote, Facebook's general counsel Ted Ullyot thanked all who voted and ‘the users and experts who earlier commented on the proposed documents'.

He also claimed that although the final results are now being reviewed by an outside auditor, preliminary numbers indicate that approximately 74.4 per cent of users opted to go with the new proposed documents.

Ullyot claimed that Facebook strongly believed that its proposed documents satisfied the concerns raised in February by users, over the use of data and images if they chose to un-register from the site.

However there was some concern over the small amount of votes received. Ullyot said: “The more than 600,000 users who voted constitute a significant number of people, but at the same time that's a small number compared to our user base of more than 200 million.

“We made significant efforts to make voting easy and to give everyone the opportunity to vote - including by translating the documents and voting application into several of the most popular languages on the site, showing a message about the vote on users' home pages, and running advertisements and videos across Facebook promoting the vote.”

Despite the low turnout of voters, he did claim that this was the first user-wide vote for users, and remained hopeful that there will be greater participation in future votes. As a result, Facebook is considering ‘lowering the 30-per cent threshold that the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities establishes for a user vote to be binding.'

See original article on scmagazineuk.com