Sitting in the kitchen in Rome on a Sunday summer august afternoon, having a coffee while being on facebook a friend from uni in england posts a status update. He is in San Paolo Brazil and about to go to see Palmeiras in the stadium. Another friend, Brazilian, met years earlier in the range of 30 seconds posts an update saying how awesome it is that he is going to the stadium to see Palmeiras. A wall comment and an inbox after, they went to the stadium together and resulted in a friendship between two people who had never met before.
So great social network user case, in particular of facebook. It is useful and exclusive as is there no other tool with such capillarity and real time communication. It is based on users, their interactions and their data. So users should have a say in the way their online identity is governed. And facebook knows this. No offence meant, the decision to have users vote on policies - it is a great step in theory, just the code and the process was unclear. First, find the facebook governance link, okay present but as unappealing as the ads column on the right. At the bottom of it. It was still pretty easy to find the page lets not fool ourselves. Click on it, but I actually found about this page from a friend, and once you have allowed the app a green link enter voting loads the facebook governance page. Usual timeline with some strange thumbnails at the top. A documents and a double pointed arrow one. Clicking on the latter opened another page with six links. each around 2000 words long. These documents are a step forward by facebook and must be there. Still a surprising slow user interface. it would be nice to see the percentage completed and user dropout rate during the process. No transversal voting statistics in real time - I get a notification every time my friends dog goes to do his needs, but the feedback on this process remains obscure and obfuscated. Since everyone is innocent before proven guilty all the speculations about why such a step was taken now - perhaps collateral risk management should not be taken into consideration. it is a step forward but more can be done. if facebook is a nation, and its users can vote then it is only logical that there should be people making sure that their vote is heard who are external from facebook. Governments should not be involved directly in this, if only to establish a channel between facebook and its citizens. Saluti
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