Facebook wins Zimbabwe election on T&Cs Facebook is claiming a victory in a vote to decide on changes to its terms and conditions, even though only 0.03 per cent of users voted on changes. A big row broke out in February when Facebook tried to change its terms and conditions to give the company licenses over all content posted on the site for ever. Outrage from …
Facebook is a privately owned business. It receives no public money. AFAIK, no contracts are made with the users so the owners make the rules they want and the users either accept or stop using the service.
Just like complaints about 'freedom of speech' when a forum moderator has to slap down or ban an abusive troll or troublemaker there is no legal requirement for democratic process in this case. I'd be surprised if they don't hit copyright issues with their new Ts & Cs unless they force users to opt-in to the new rules (but there again IANAL).
While there is no requirement for democracy, management should be aware that if they upset too many users, those users could just go elsewhere which is bad for business. The only real 'vote' a user has in this case is the one with their feet.
I voted, but I only found it by accident and the page was incredibly confusing and badly written, so it was very hard to tell whether you were actually voting for what you wanted.
I think Facebook deliberately kept it low profile with a short voting window (only 7 days, despite this having rumbled on for months) and hard/frustrating to understand in the hope they could manipulate the turnout and result.
I don't think they're nice people, I'm mentally filing them next to eBay now.
The only winning move is
Not to play
I other words, what the heck is compelling all these dumb sheeple to put sensitive info on a site like FB in the first place? (or to use FB at all, for that matter. I could partially understand that for 12-yo girls, but apparently some _adults_ have a FB page too)
Tails - you loose
I like the comparison as zimbabwean election.
looks like you might have coined a new phrase here ;-)
As a British zimbokraut (those who know me will understand the term ;-) ) I can very much relate to that and truly believe that is may be worthwhile taking up into the latest edition of the Oxfords...
You don't think, do you? You mean a private company, running a private enterprise tried to control it's operation by hiding a chance for the customers to chance the T&C with legal mumbo-jumbo and hidden options?
Gosh! Shock! Call out the guard!
Another reason to thoroughly scan the T&C of any website you wish to use to spread pictures of your mates doing something stupid, BEFORE you upload them!
"We though our users were stupid."
To be fair they do have evidence (I mean more evidence than that sentence)..
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/14/facebook_twitter_users_dunces_amoral/
Given how anyone I know that uses Facebook uses Facebook why would they care if they are
granting perpetual rights for Facebook to use the copyright
material they have swiped from somewhere else and posted.
0.03% sounds like about the right proportion of Facebook users who have posted
anything that is
a) Original
b) Worth looking at
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