Facebook Officially Adopts Revamped Privacy Policy

About three weeks ago, we reported that Facebook had decided to comply with the recommendations of Canadian Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart and augment their privacy policy. At the time, we noted that Facebook was soliciting feedback from users, allowing the company to have some room for further change if the new policies weren’t popular. Because Facebook users didn’t have significant feedback, the change officially went into effect yesterday.

Michael Richter, Facebook’s deputy general counsel for intellectual property, product, and regulatory affairs, explained the decision at the Official Facebook Blog.

While a lot of people participated, the total number of people commenting did not reach the threshold of 7,000 that makes a vote necessary according to our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. Because of this — and the fact that many of the comments were positive — we’ve decided to adopt the revised policy. We’ll be posting it in English, French, Italian, German and Spanish soon.

In the coming weeks and months, we plan to build on the progress we’ve already made in making the document more accessible by also adding definitions of key terms, screen shots of important pages and informational “learn more” videos. We think these visual resources will make it even easier to understand how privacy works on Facebook.

The steps Facebook has taken to address criticism over its privacy policies have been admirable. Furthermore, including Facebook users in the process shows that the company isn’t taking its 300 million users for granted. While there are still problems with Facebook, including the site’s propensity for attracting phishing attacks, Facebook has set a high standard for other social media websites.

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