In a recent Wired article, Ryan Tate explains how Facebook users have eliminated their own right to democracy on the network.  Ryan Tate is a senior writer for Wired and enjoys journalism, technology, and culture.  He has even released a book, The 20% Doctrine: How Tinkering, Goofing Off, and breaking the Rules at Work Drive Success in Business.

In Tate’s article, he describes the history of Facebook and the policy to make changes.  In the past, any time Facebook makes a change to the user agreement, users have the right to vote on whether or not this change happens.  Unfortunately, Facebook requires at least 30% of Facebook users to vote in order for it to be valid.  This week, Facebook let users vote on whether or not a vote is required for future changes.  The majority of voters voted against this; however, 30% of the Facebook population did not vote so it was not counted.

Facebook has taken away the right for users to vote on upcoming changes.

While I think it is unfortunate that Facebook users have lost the “democracy” the social network once had, I do not agree that there ever was a democracy there.  In the past, no Facebook vote has ever had 30% of users vote.  It has never even come close to being 30%.  I believe this isn’t a coincidence.  Facebook does very little to publicize such voting events.  For everything else, Facebook isn’t afraid to pull out all the stops to publicize something.  I believe this is a way to take away users opinions while being able to put the blame on users.  I think the future will hold a lot of interesting changes on Facebook, and they probably won’t be benefiting users.