14 DAY TRIAL // Facebook seems to be trying out a new way of elaborating the internal policies for one of the most popular web sites on the Internet – user input. In other words, the company says, the users will play a “meaningful role” in deciding how things will run in the community, which currently houses about 175 million people. Put together, that many individuals would form the sixth most populous country in the world, right after Brazil. Managing such a large amount of users is a difficult task and a challenge, and, through this measure, Facebook probably aims at keeping most of them happy.
The decision has probably been made following a huge scandal last week, when the company managing the site introduced a new policy aimed at regulating the faith that posts, images, videos and comments that users left or were deleted had. The decision sparked ample protests, with tens of thousands of users joining in groups to contest the initiative. Facebook must have then realized that it must keep as many people onboard, rather than push them away with unpopular resolutions. So, it has decided to try out democracy for a change and see how that pans out.
“As people share more information on services like Facebook, a new relationship is created between Internet companies and the people they serve. The past week reminded us that users feel a real sense of ownership over Facebook itself, not just the information they share,” founder Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement on Thursday.
According to the new system, if more than 7,000 users protested against a certain decision, then the ruling would go to a vote. In order for the initiative to become binding for Facebook, 30 percent of all account holders would have to vote on it. In numbers, this means that 53 million people would have to cast their vote each time, in order for the site to change anything. This will undoubtedly be very hard, as recent protests, which have been considered to be really massive, have only come from about 139,600 users as of Thursday.
The massive uproar that last week's decisions sparked comes from a very solid background. When the site was founded only 5 years ago, as a student-only community, users were told that they would be guaranteed the safety and security of their profiles, as well as their privacy. A series of hiccups along the way seriously broke the trust members had in the service.