Facebook Site Governance Vote on Pace to Break One Million Participants

The third-ever Facebook Site Governance vote is on pace to shatter previous records and see participation from over a million users. Unfortunately, that’s still about 299 million votes shy of wh...
Facebook Site Governance Vote on Pace to Break One Million Participants
Written by Josh Wolford
  • The third-ever Facebook Site Governance vote is on pace to shatter previous records and see participation from over a million users. Unfortunately, that’s still about 299 million votes shy of what is needed to make the results of the vote binding.

    Yesterday we told you that most Facebook users were voting against the proposed changes to Facebook policy, which include additions to the SSR and Data Use policies, as well as the abolishment of the current voting system. We also told you that it doesn’t really matter, as there’s no way that enough people will vote to make the results binding. Facebook requires that 30% of the member base (roughly 300 million, currently) vote, otherwise the results are simply advisory. And in this case, “advisory” simply means Facebook gets to do what they want and push the new policies through.

    The last Site Governance vote, which took place in June, saw 342,632 participants. By 3pm ET today, the number of participants on the current vote had already topped 300,000 – and it’s only day three. Facebook users have until December 10th at 3pm ET to cast their vote. So if the participation rate stays roughly the same, just over 1 million users will end up taking the time to vote.

    As you can see, the users that have already voted are overwhelmingly voting no:

    Although the vote is on pace to best the previous level of participation by over 200%, it will still only account for around 1% of all Facebook users.

    Facebook is sending out emails to all of its members reminding them of the vote, but barring some sort of Stanford band-level miracle, this will be the last time that Facebook users will ever be able to vote on proposed policy changes.

    Get the WebProNews newsletter delivered to your inbox

    Get the free daily newsletter read by decision makers

    Subscribe
    Advertise with Us

    Ready to get started?

    Get our media kit