Data democracy

March 1st, 2009

Yesterday Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of profilepage facebook, announced that users are getting the possibility to vote on policy decisions. After a few mistakes in the past, regarding the privacy of their users personal data, facebook made a big step in the right direction.

Facebook decided that all new policies are presented to the users first. Then the user gets to speak out and tell what they think about it. When 7000 users don’t agree on a proposal then there is going to be a vote. When 30% or more votes against the new policy, it won’t happen. 7000 users may seem like a lot of users, but keep in mind that facebook got around 160.000.000 users. Zuckerberg explained :

“History tells us that systems are most fairly governed when there is an open and transparent dialogue between the people who make decisions and those who are affected by them. We believe history will one day show that this principle holds true for companies as well, and we’re looking to moving in this direction with you.”

Read the whole blog post here.

I think its great that a big company like facebook decided that its good to get there decision making more transparent. And I hope more companies will follow their example.

Iif you’re interested about this subject I can recommend my thesis in which I name transparency as a possible way to protect our right to privacy. Also that companies will be forced to make there day to day business more transparent because they are getting more and more dependant on user data. At the moment its only available in Dutch.

Also the book “The transparent society” from author David Brin gives a fresh view on the subject of privacy.

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