Privacy groups to Facebook: Let us vote

Two privacy organizations sent Facebook a letter urging it to reconsider its new stance on passing privacy changes. The company recently announced that it was striking its previous practice of allowing the Facebook community to vote on privacy changes.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy co-authored a letter sent to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook chief executive, today. In the letter, the organizations tackle Facebook’s most recent privacy proposal, which will remove the option for users to vote on privacy changes in the future.

Users are upset about the change because it removes a big part of the community’s voice and control over their data. Facebook, however, promises that it will take into consideration the quality of comments made about its changes.

It should be noted that Facebook wasn’t actually attracting many comments or “votes” anyway. Only about 10 percent of its users actually opted to speak up after Facebook proposed changes to its privacy statements in June. It seems people mostly take to yelling about the changes on their statuses and posting messages such as:

“In response to the new Facebook guidelines, I hereby declare that my copyright is attached to all of my personal details contained in my personal and business profiles, including, but not limited to: all postings, status updates, comments, illustrations, paintings, drawings, art, photographs, music, videos, etc.”

Of course, as Mike Isaac over at All Things D points out, you’ve already given Facebook permission to use all those things just by signing up.

The privacy groups are further concerned with the removal of the ability to control who messages you through the “Who can send you Facebook messages” tool. They believe that Facebook users will start to experience more spam messages — a hot topic for Facebook’s security team which works to remove spam from the site.

Facebook declined to comment on the letter.

hat tip Bloomberg; Privacy image via Shutterstock