Facebook is once again tangling with privacy advocates, this time about proposed changes to its voting structure, messaging options, and Instagram integration.
In a Tuesday letter to Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg, the Center for Digital Democracy and the Electronic Privacy Information Center asked that Facebook not make the proposed changes because they run afoul of users' rights.
"Because these proposed changes raise privacy risks for users, may be contrary to law, and violate your previous commitments to users about site governance, we urge you to withdraw the proposed changes," wrote EPIC president Marc Rotenberg and CDD president Jeffrey Chester.
A Facebook spokesman declined to comment on the letter.
Last week, Facebook proposed doing away with a voting system it put in place in 2009, which let users vote on pending changes to the site's terms of service. "We found that the voting mechanism, which is triggered by a specific number of comments, actually resulted in a system that incentivized the quantity of comments over their quality," said Elliot Schrage, Facebook's vice president of communications, public policy, and marketing.
Rotenberg and Chester acknowledged that the voting system "set an unreasonably high participation threshold," but argued that dropping it altogether "raises questions about Facebook's willingness to take seriously the participation of Facebook users."
Facebook also proposed dropping the "Who can send you Facebook messages?" section of its privacy controls with "new filters for managing incoming messages." At this point, Facebook lets you pick Everyone, Friends of Friends, or just Friends in response to who can email you via Facebook - meaning you can block whole groups of people from contacting you, if you so choose.
Rotenberg and Chester argued that loosening controls on messaging will result in increased spam. "Facilitating spam violates users' privacy and security, as many Facebook scams are accomplished through the messaging feature," they wrote.
Finally, Facebook wants to share information with the companies it owns - like Instagram. The duo worried that the move would allow Facebook to "combine user profiles and freely share user data between the two sites."
Facebook's changes, according to Rotenberg and Chester, are in violation of a Nov. 2011 settlement between Facebook and the Federal Trade Commission.
"The settlement prohibits Facebook from misrepresenting the extent to which it maintains the privacy or security of covered information," the letter said. "Additionally, prior to any sharing of users' personal information with a third party, Facebook must make a clear and prominent disclosure and obtain the affirmative express consent of its users."
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