Hasta La Gadget!

Learn how to vote on Facebook’s privacy policies and you can make the social network your own – wouldn’t that be amazing? In reality, Facebook will be opening up a collection of privacy policy changing votes that will be open to the public (so long as you’ve got a Facebook profile) from now until December 10th. This vote is being relegated by an independent auditor and may – or may not – actually have an effect on the way those inside Facebook make their decisions regarding said privacy policies – sound like a square deal to you?

The proposed policy changes work with how Facebook handles your data, Instagram bits and pieces, and the possibility of nixing the ability of users like you to vote in this manner in the first place. Each of the changes up for vote this week were proposed just over a week ago and were quickly the subject of controversy at the hands of privacy groups asking Facebook to halt everything top to bottom. Facebook has instead decided, again, to put it all up to a vote.

The rules being voted on are outlined in a rather simple way by Facebook’s Vice President of Public Policy and Marketing Elliot Schrage. The policy changes proposed are outlined as follows:

Ownership of your content. A number of the comments suggested that we were changing ownership of your content on Facebook. We’re not. This is not true and has never been the case. Anyone who uses Facebook owns and controls the content and information they post, as stated in our SRR. They control how that content and information is shared. That is our policy, and it always has been. We’re not proposing to change this key aspect of how Facebook works.

Privacy controls. In our latest set of updates, we proposed to add language reminding you of the difference between privacy settings (which let you decide who can see what you post anywhere on Facebook) and timeline visibility preferences (which impact how things show up on your timeline but don’t impact other parts of Facebook, like news feed, relationship pages, or search results). Some people asked if this means we’re removing controls you currently have over who can see the things you post. We are not. We simply added this language to further explain how these privacy settings and timeline preferences work. In response to your feedback, however, we’re adding additional language to remind you that you can delete things you post or change the audience at any time.

Advertising policies. We’ve always been clear that we are able to provide free services by showing you ads that are relevant to your interests, and we use your posts – including pages you like – to help show these ads. We proposed new language to make it clearer that those likes and posts include topics like religion or political views. This language does not mean that we are changing our Advertising Guidelines, which prohibit advertisers from running ads that assert or imply sensitive personal characteristics, such as race, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation. We’ve added additional language, including a link to our guidelines, to this proposal to make that clearer.

The proposed change that would get rid of user voting was suggested recently because of the utter massiveness of the social network and the quickness with which it’s grown since the democratic process was put in place back in 2009. Back then Facebook had closer to 200 million users and the first vote like the one going on now was just 665,654 votes strong – just that many people decided to participate, that is.

The second large vote such as this happened in June with 900 million possible voters turning up as 342,632 actual voters in the end. Now with that total number of Facebook users in all ramping up faster than ever – more than a billion exist amongst Facebook’s ranks – a binding vote would have to be beastly. The rule notes that for a vote to become “binding” – that is, considered by the council that makes the rules – a Facebook rules vote would require “more than 30 percent of all active registered users” to participate. Think you can get 300 million voters to turn out inside Facebook?

[via Facebook]

Facebook privacy policy now open to public vote is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It’s really not a surprise when you’re told that people spend a lot of time on social media. We all know that Facebook has over a billion users, and that all these statistics that get thrown around of how many photos users share on social networking sites are just a fancy way of saying, “people are using social media.” However, it turns out that Americans are collectively spending over two billion hours on social media, every month.

In its annual Social Media Report, Nielsen says that Americans spent a collective 121 billion minutes on social media websites in July alone, which is up from 88 billion the year before. 121 billion minutes equates to just over 230,000 years, which means if we split that time equally amongst every American, that would be about 13 minutes per person per day.

Of course, not everyone in America uses social media — Facebook alone has around 150 million active users in the US according to the report, and there are a total of around 212 million Americans using social media as we speak, compared to the current total US population of 312 million. It’s also very possible that a lot of social media accounts are probably duplicates or multiple accounts for one person. So, more realistically, people are probably spending a lot more than just 13 minutes surfing Facebook and Twitter every day. Specifically, if we took those 121 billion minutes and split them equally amongst the 212 million social media users in the US, that would be approximately 19 minutes per person per day, on average.

These are just rough estimates obviously, and not every single social media user only spends 19 minutes per day browsing the sites, but the total 121 billion minutes makes sense no doubt. Furthermore, Nielsen reported that, on average, users spend roughly 20% of their time online on a computer browsing social media, while on mobile devices, users spend around 30% of their time surfing the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ on their tiny screens.

Americans spend over 2 billion hours on social media per month is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you’re finding yourself waking up to massive amounts of notifications today after a nice afternoon nap, do not fret, it’s just a Facebook bug. What’s actually happening here is that Facebook is, as they’re saying, experiencing a bit of a bug – one that signs users up for Facebook Groups sometimes even when they’d never been a part of those groups in the first place. As a result of this, some users are experiencing massive amounts of notifications from the groups that they up until today had no idea existed.

This bug is currently being worked on by Facebook, but for those of you that want a quick fix: you’ll have to leave each Group one-by-one. The other solution is to go to the little white triangle that sits in the upper right-hand side of your Facebook screen (near your name) and click it – then click Account Settings – then click Notifications. From there you can simply turn off all the Notifications you desire.

Meanwhile there’s one massive complaint thread about the situation, and a statement has been issued by Facebook representatives that reads as follows:

“A bug surfaced last night that caused some users to be re-added to groups that they previously belonged to. We are working to resolve the issue now. In the meantime, we are rolling out a short-term fix for all closed groups that will make the content of those groups inaccessible to the re-added members.” – Facebook Representative

The most concerning thing about this situation should be – for you – the idea that Facebook keeps a record of the groups you’ve been a part of in the past on their social network. This information clearly remains a part of the larger Facebook archive as it’s been proven today with re-ads galore. On the other hand, this should have all become clear as soon as the Facebook Timeline Layout was made solid – Facebook keeps everything.

At the moment there’s no ETA for when this problem is going to be solved, only that assurance that Facebook is making closed groups the priority here with re-stopping this flood. While we see what Facebook does to keep everything neat – let us know if you’ve experienced anything strange today!

[via Slate]

Facebook bug re-adds users to groups they’d long since left is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The online film you’re about to witness may very well blow your mind – and not just because it’s web exclusive, and made to attach directly to a Facebook app where you’ll get un-Scrooge-ified. It’s Snoop Lion (aka Snoop Dogg) speaking on behalf of himself, Ebeneezer Snoop, in what the folks at Adidas are calling a “pioneering” Facebook app – one that’s sure to get you in the holiday spirit – that spirit where you buy up tons of sportswear and hot sneakers.

It’s an animated wonderland in here with some of the “world’s finest sporting and cultural icons” including David Beckham as the ghost of holiday present, Stan Smith as the ghost of holiday past, Derrick Rose as the ghost of holiday future, and Rota Ora as the ghost of holiday future as well – yes, there are two ghosts of holiday future. This holiday tale is about to get extremely cautionary on you, top to bottom.

The big deal here is the fact that you’re able to send some holiday cheer to some friends via Facebook with a process that includes the folks at Adidas going through your gigantic list of contacts. They have a peek at if you’ve wished everyone you know a happy birthday – and if you haven’t, you’re given a second chance. WIth this second chance you’ll be giving a postcard (digitally, of course), that includes any one of the superstars shown above.

This all links in quite easily to the holiday Adidas collection of sneakers, accessories, customizable bits and pieces, and everything in-between. Whether you need a new pair of kicks or just want to get down with the holiday screen-on fireplace, listen to Uncle Snoop and let him let you in on how not to be a bother at the holidays.

Adidas teams digitally with Snoop Lion for #bahumbizzle campaign is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you’ve been a long-time Facebook user, then you know how controversial some of the privacy updates have been on the social networking site. The company launched its current site governance model in 2009, which gave users the right to vote on privacy policy issues. However, Facebook is now proposing to get rid of that system, saying that Facebook has outgrown the old model.

Facebook wants to replace the system with one that solicits high-quality feedback instead of just votes. This would also prevent votes from being triggered by copy-and-pasted comments from privacy activists. Currently, if a proposed change gets 7,000 “substantive comments,” Facebook users can vote on the change and the vote will be binding if more than 30% of all Facebook users vote.

Facebook says that it’s doing away with the voting system because it “resulted in a system that incentivized the quantity of comments over their quality.” Therefore, the social network is “proposing to end the voting component of the process in favor of a system that leads to more meaningful feedback and engagement.”

Facebook is also proposing changes to its Data Use Policy, which explains how the site collects and uses user data. In the coming weeks, Facebook will roll out new ways of responding to questions and comments from its users, and they’ll be launching a section on Facebook where you’ll be able to submit questions about privacy to the company’s chief privacy officer of Policy, Erin Egan.

[via TechCrunch]

Facebook to end user voting on privacy issues is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.