Facebook

On Saturday, we concluded the notice and comment process for our latest set of proposed changes to Facebook's governing documents. This was the fifth time we've previewed new policies and asked for feedback since we adopted this framework early last year. I'm pleased to report that during the latest week-long process, we received more than 4,000 comments from people around the world, including users, regulators, and online privacy advocates.

As we announced at the opening of the period, these latest proposed revisions to our Privacy Policy and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (SRR) were designed to make way for some exciting new products we're contemplating. Because not all of these products have been finalized and many aren't yet built at all, we'll be able to use your comments to help influence our product development.

In addition to taking your feedback into account as our product teams and engineers are designing and coding, we wanted to respond to some of the common comments.

For example, some of you commented, in connection with the proposed new Privacy Policy, that you'd like to be able to hide your Friends List. In fact, this is something that people already have the ability to do. We announced this feature back in December, and you can read more about it in our Help Center.

Others had questions about the sections in the SRR requiring people to provide accurate information and limiting them to one account. These are not new requirements. Facebook has always been based on a real-name culture, and we feel strongly that these policies provide greater accountability and a safer and more trusted environment across the site.

Still others asked to be opted-out of having their information shared with advertisers. This reflects a common misconception about advertising on Facebook. We don't share your information with advertisers unless you tell us to (e.g. to get a sample, hear more, or enter a contest). Any assertion to the contrary is false. Period. Instead, we enable advertisers to target anonymized demographics and attributes. That is, a company selling boats can target people between 40 and 50 years old who expressed an interest in boating. However, we never provide the advertiser any names or other information about the people who are shown, or even who click on, the ads.

We also received questions about the proposed new language in the Privacy Policy relating to our plans to work with some pre-approved partner websites to offer a personalized experience when you arrive at these sites. Based on your comments, we think it's important to clarify a couple of points, even though this program has not yet been launched or even finalized.

First, it's important to underscore that this will be a test with a handful of carefully selected partners to provide express personalization on their sites. These partners will be pre-selected, reviewed, and bound by contracts with Facebook – much like other partners we have worked with in other contexts to deliver unique and innovative experiences. For example, we're working with Yahoo! to integrate Facebook across their properties, AOL to integrate our chat with AIM, and we first partnered with CNN.com to make their broadcast of the Presidential Inauguration more social with the launch of the Facebook live stream application.

In addition, partners who participate in this test will be required to provide an easy and prominent method for you to opt out directly from their website and delete your data if you do opt out. There will also be new features on Facebook.com to help you control your experience when you visit these sites.

In sum, the core idea behind this test is to work with partners to enable them to present you with a better, more relevant, and tailored experience when you visit their sites. While we have not finalized these features or partnerships, we think this is an exciting opportunity to make surfing the web a smoother and more engaging experience for people who use Facebook.

We're committed to building products that advance what's possible for people who want more personalized and social experiences on the Web. We're equally committed to evolving our products and technologies in a way that respects the trust you have put into Facebook.

As always, thanks for participating in our open governance process and sharing your feedback with us. We expect the new documents to be live on the site in the coming days. Stay tuned for future updates by becoming a fan of the Facebook Site Governance Page.


Barry is a director on Facebook's communications and public policy team.