When Facebook announced the “Facebook Governance” voting back in February, Mark Zuckerberg hailed it as an “unprecedented” effort to involve users in the development of the terms of service. Almost two months later the voting has finally begun and around 260,000 individuals have voted on which terms to use. Within one week, 30 percent of the site’s population, or 60,000,000 individuals, will have to vote in order for the decision to stick. In other words, the vote is more symbolic than an actual vote.
Not All Users Will Be Active This Week
So why do we say that this vote is symbolic? Let’s first consider how many users will be active this week. If we are to assume that there are 200 million users on Facebook, and approximately 50 percent are active daily (a number that Facebook regularly tosses around), then at a minimum 100 million users will have the opportunity to vote. Let’s also assume that another 15 percent log in at least once a week.
That would mean 130 million users will have the opportunity to vote before next Thursday. That would also mean 46 percent of the active users over the next week will have to vote in order for the Facebook Governance Vote to count. Let’s compare this to the number of voters in last year’s U.S. election. According to the CIA World Factbook, the U.S. population as of July 2008 was 303,824,640.
Of the almost 304 million United States citizens, 129,438,754 votes were counted, according to CNN. In percentage terms, that means 42.6 percent of U.S. population had their votes counted last year. The difference between a 42.6 percent voting turnout and 46 percent (the percentage of estimated weekly active Facebook users that will need to vote in order for the Site Governance Vote to count) is not unreasonably large.
Voting Is Only In English
However, the voting is only in English and a large percentage of Facebook’s users (around 30 – 40 percent) don’t speak English. There are many languages spoken on Facebook though and just like Switzerland where there are multiple official languages (German, French, and Italian), Facebook should theoretically have multiple official languages given their large international reach.
Unfortunately, language wasn’t considered for this vote. That means you can essentially remove 30 percent of the estimated 130 million weekly active users. If you do the math, this means there will be approximately 91 million English speaking users that visit Facebook over the one week voting period. This also means that approximately 66 percent of English speaking users that visit Facebook during the Site Governance Voting period will need to vote.
If the world’s largest democracy can’t get anywhere near that sort of voter turnout, how can Facebook?
Do the Users Really Care?
So while my fifth grade math calculations are not a perfect science, the real question is: do Facebook users care about the Site Governance vote? So far almost 260,000 users have voted and that number continues to grow at a fairly decent pace. Compare that to Ashton Kutcher who was able to attract over 600,000 fans to his public profile in just 3 days. I think we know what issues Facebook users are most concerned about. Here’s a hint about what issue users don’t care about: Facebook’s terms of service.
It’s not exactly news but rallying individuals in support of something is much more challenging than rallying people against an issue. Facebook users tend to be much more reactionary and when Facebook changes something, users tend to lash out. Eventually the hype dies down and the users continue on using the service.
Less of A Vote, More of A Statement
When all is said and done, the Facebook Governance vote is less of an actual vote and more of a statement by Facebook to the users: you can have a say in the future of Facebook. Ultimately though, the users already do have a say regardless of whether or not they vote. If they all stop using the service tomorrow, Facebook will be forced to change the way it functions.
Luckily for Facebook, the users aren’t running for the doors. Instead, close to one million users are joining daily and it doesn’t appear to be slowing down for the time being. Whether or not 60 million users participate in the Facebook Governance vote, the site remains to be the largest global social network, and the users appear to love it.
Update
As one commenter has pointed out, the documents were posted in multiple languages even though the voting application is only in English. At least other people can read the documents even if they can’t understand how to vote.
Update 2
Barry Schnitt of Facebook has posted a comment below which clarifies a few things. First, Barry states that the application has been translated into “French, Spanish, Italian, or German”. I have personally tried switching languages and for some reason it won’t display in any of those languages for me. Let me know if you can get it to display.
Another interesting thing that Barry states is that a whopping 80 percent of Facebook users return weekly (greater than my estimated 65 percent). These two things definitely increase the odds that the vote will reach 60 million individuals. Barry also states that they have decided to extend “the vote for an entire week.” Finally, Facebook will “be promoting the vote to users in a number of ways, including messages at the top of everyone’s profile (in multiple languages), ads, virtual gifts, stream stories from users who vote.”
It’s pretty clear that Facebook is attempting to get 60 million users to vote. Unfortunately as of this morning, the voting has reached 280,863 votes, only 20,000 more votes than 24 hours ago. I’m guessing we’ll see that number increase over the coming days as people log back in during the work week.
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The main question is out of all those who voted, how many actually read both documents?
Comment by David Haddad — April 18, 2009 @ 9:08 am
Also, how many know about the vote? I only know because I read this and other blog, but I'm quite sure that at least 90% (to not say 100%) of my friends doesn't know that they can send their vote (excluding the already mentioned issue of the language).
Comment by Andrea Sciamanna — April 18, 2009 @ 9:32 am
Thanks for a well-written article. I suspected this was more of a demonstration that Facebook's "heart is in the right place", rather than a real decision-marking process, but this clarified things. And I DO think it's a good thing.
Comment by Stan Scott — April 18, 2009 @ 9:33 am
If someone sets up participation they know cannot succeed, I wouldn't call it symbolic; I'd call it a ruse.
I think there are a couple problems in the logic of your numbers. First, does Facebook say it is the same 50% who are active daily or are they just saying 50% are active daily? Second, if you want to use turnout in the U.S. 2008 election as some kind of benchmark, I think it would be more accurate to use the percentage of voting age or voting eligible population.
http://elections.gmu.edu/Turnout_2008G.html
Comment by Paula Ford — April 18, 2009 @ 10:32 am
Comparing a facebook vote to a national democratic election is surely a bit too flattering to Facebook. The statement Facebook is making isn’t really proportional to the size of the vote, in fact I would be surprised if even 5% of Facebook users bothered to read the documents and vote. But the implication goes beyond numbers, I think the statement here is Facebook ceding power to some of its users.
Comment by Mark — April 18, 2009 @ 1:26 pm
You BET you’re right. On the money. But, essentially, the new docs were, the old docs more carefully worded, better written. The only new thing in them was, the added proviso of added advance notice of change in TOS. So the vote has little impact. (And I see, to the right of my name above, as I type this comment, “Connect with your Facebook Account”, so YOU don’t care, either.)
Comment by fjpoblam — April 19, 2009 @ 9:44 am
Sorry, but the comparison to a presidential election is breath-takingly invalid and irrelevant.
For one, as Mark implies, a change in Facebook ToS doesn’t seem (and isn’t) anywhere near as important as the election or re-election of a president, and you seem to acknowledge that (“If the worlds [sic] largest democracy can’t get anywhere near that sort of voter turnout, how can Facebook?”). This would make it seem even more difficult for Facebook users to get to the mark. It also means less media coverage, so less will know about it.
However, there are three other factors on the other side. First of all, as Paula pointed out, the metric you’re using doesn’t even make a terrible amount of sense in the first place.
Also, you just arbitrarily chose the United States, even though some other democracies have turnouts of well over 90%, even where voting is not mandatory. These tend to be countries with a more educated population than the US—and the population of Facebook users is certainly more educated than the US population, even solely off the fact that they have internet access.
Finally, most importantly, the process of voting in a presidential election is in no way, shape, or form comparable to voting on Facebook. Voting in an election, for the vast majority of Americans, means registering ahead of time, getting in your car, using gas, standing in line for what is often multiple hours, and reading a long ballot with many choices. Voting on Facebook means hitting a button on a site which you likely spend a lot of time on anyway.
Ultimately, I agree that the users will not reach the threshold. However, this article is like saying “the Pittsburgh Steelers only lost 25% of their regular season games last year, so how do you expect THIRTY percent of Facebook users to vote?”
Comment by Zach — April 19, 2009 @ 10:03 am
Hi Nick,
The application is actually translated into the same languages all the documents are. If you change your language on Facebook to French, Spanish, Italian, or German, the language of the application will correspond. Also, we picked an entire week because during that time 80% of our users log in. Finally, whether or not the vote reaches the 30% threshold to be binding, users we be sending a very public message about their feelings toward our proposed changes. This is something that we are not aware of any company ever doing.
We’re hoping that all of our users will vote and so we’re putting a lot of effort toward making sure everyone has the opportunity to voice their opinion. For example, we’re extending the vote for an entire week. We’ll also be promoting the vote to users in a number of ways, including messages at the top of everyone’s profile (in multiple languages), ads, virtual gifts, stream stories from users who vote, and reminders on the blog and Official Facebook Page. Thanks for your help in publicizing the vote.
Barry
Comment by Barry Schnitt — April 19, 2009 @ 11:00 am
“If the world’s largest democracy can’t get anywhere near that sort of voter turnout”
You mean India? Get your missing education here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout
Comment by back to school — April 19, 2009 @ 1:28 pm
Nick, Its interesting calculations. Unique angle coverage of this story. Sweet!
In all fairness, facebook has put lot of resources and mindshare to get users to get their voice by voting.
Unlike US elections, there is not party lobbying for specific issues to drive people to the polls. So this is the closest to a clean democratic system that we can aspire for.
Those who were vocal to oppose certain terms that lead to this TOS voting will be sure to have voted already, so we can all going back to just using facebook.
It would help in the coming week if you list the specific items in the terms and which are contagious issues that have dichotomous decisions with prior flareups and help people decide how our facebook vote really counts.
Comment by Sudha Jamthe — April 19, 2009 @ 2:37 pm
you know, I just don’t care enough to vote for new TOS. I simply want FB to do their job and be as loyal to its faithful users as we are to them. I have to read legalese Mon-Fri from 9-5… I log into FB to have fun, not to work, sheesh.
FB… work on making a better service and social tool… you know what are fair TOS… we shouldn’t have to vote on that.
Comment by Sean MacDhai — April 19, 2009 @ 5:24 pm
Sadly, there is no Chinese translation for the voting.
Comment by Joseph — April 20, 2009 @ 1:47 am
yeah good joke. users get a say in big changes like this.
in other news twitter gets an update; prepare for the next new facebook next week!
Comment by Jeff A. — April 20, 2009 @ 9:50 am
ID LIKE TO COMMENT ON FACEBOOK BEING A GREAT PLACE TO TALK TO SCHOOL MATES AND FRIENDS ONE THING I DONT LIKE IS ALL THE FLITHY LANGUAGE THAT PEOPLE USE. I SORRY BUT IT HAS GOT TO QUIT. PEOPLE WHO USE THIS KINDA TALK CANT RESPECT THEMSELVES NEVER THE LESS ANY ONE ELSE. PLEASE PUT SOME KIND OF NOTICE THAT IF THEY CONTINUE TO TALK LIKE THIS THEY ARE BANNED FROM FACE BOOK THANK YOU THIS KINDA TALK IS VERY INAPPROPIATE ON THIS DECENT PLACE THANK YOU
Comment by SANDY BROUGH — June 7, 2010 @ 4:00 pm