Proposed Updates to our Governing Documents

by Elliot Schrage, Vice President, Communications, Public Policy and Marketing

http://www.facebook.com/fbsitegovernance/app_4949752878

Today we are proposing some updates to two documents which govern
our site: our Data Use Policy, which explains how we collect and use
data when people use Facebook, and our Statement of Rights and
Responsibilities (SRR), which explains the terms governing the use of
our services. These updates provide more detailed information about our
practices, reflect changes to our products, and improve how we conduct
our site governance process.


Improving the Site Governance Process: Our goal has always been to find
ways to effectively engage your views when we propose changes to our
governing policies. That commitment guided our decision in 2009 to
launch an unprecedented process for user feedback. When we held our
second global site governance vote in June, we indicated that we would
review our site governance process in light of the growth of both our
community – to over one billion users – and our company – which is now
publicly traded and accountable to regulators around the world. Our
intention was to make sure the process still served its original
purpose.


As a result of this review, we are proposing to restructure our site
governance process. We deeply value the feedback we receive from you
during our comment period. In the past, your substantive feedback has
led to changes to the proposals we made. However, we found that the
voting mechanism, which is triggered by a specific number of comments,
actually resulted in a system that incentivized the quantity of comments
over their quality. Therefore, we’re proposing to end the voting
component of the process in favor of a system that leads to more
meaningful feedback and engagement.


We will continue to post significant changes to our Data Use Policy and
SRR and provide a seven-day period for review and comment. As always, we
will carefully consider your feedback before adopting any changes. We
will also provide additional notification mechanisms, including email,
for informing you of those changes. In the coming weeks, we will roll
out new ways of responding to your questions and comments about
Facebook. These include:


Ask the Chief Privacy Officer. We’ll be launching a new feature on our
Facebook and Privacy Page to let you submit questions about privacy
to our Chief Privacy Officer of Policy, Erin Egan.
Facebook Live Events.
Erin Egan will host webcasts on a regular basis to address your comments
and questions about privacy, safety and security.

Other Proposed Updates: The Data Use Policy also includes updates
that provide more descriptions about our practices and reflect changes
to our products, including:



New tools for managing your Facebook Messages – replacing the
“Who can send you Facebook messages” setting with new filters for
managing incoming messages.
Changes to how we refer to certain products, like instant personalization.
Reminders about what’s visible to other people on Facebook. For
instance, when you hide things from your timeline, those posts are
visible elsewhere, like in news feed, on other people’s timelines, or in
search results.
Tips on managing your timeline. For example, you can use tools on
your timeline or activity log to delete your own posts, or you can ask
someone else to delete a post in which you’re tagged.

We encourage you to read through all the proposed changes using the
links below. Additionally, to view a document that highlights the
changes, please view the “tracked changes” English version. You have a
chance to review and comment on these changes before we adopt them.
Please leave any comments by 9:00 AM PST on November 28, 2012.


Once the comment period is over, we will be hosting a Facebook Live
where Erin Egan, our Chief Privacy Officer of Policy, will respond to
your comments live. Please like or follow the Site Governance Page for more details.


Thank you again for continuing to be a part of this process and helping us shape the Facebook community.


******



Proposed Statement of Rights and Responsibilities


Proposed SRR Redline


Proposed Data Use Policy


Proposed Data Use Policy Redline



English (Comment here)



From Proposed Statement of Rights and Responsibilities:


"Sharing Your Content and Information

You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook,
and you can control how it is shared through your
privacy and application settings. In addition:

For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like
photos and videos (IP content), you specifically give us the following
permission, subject to your privacy and application settings:
you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable,
royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on
or in connection with Facebook (IP License). This IP License ends when
you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been
shared with others, and they have not deleted it.
When you
delete IP content, it is deleted in a manner similar to emptying the
recycle bin on a computer. However, you understand that removed content
may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time (but will
not be available to others)."