From what I'm hearing, the whole Facebook fiasco is making them look really bad overseas in the EU. Many are seeing the first TOS and the handling of it poorly as just what it was - bad PR move. Today's short Q&A circus only strengthened the doubt the EU community has in the Facebook management team. That is what I am hearing from the EU side of things. As far as my own thoughts on 175 Million people voting on policy, it's just a ploy to pacify an already angry mob (see first handling of the TOS change, explanation, and pull of TOS). I don't think this is the last we'll hear of a policy change by Facebook as the company evolves. But as in anything else, they'll learn and eventually get it right. This time, as well as the time before, they have done a POS job of putting out a TOS. :) Rex - Rex from FriendFeed MT Plugin

Legalese ≠ Reality Transparency is closer... But problematic for a large company. Not sure we can know yet if this is a step in the right direction or smoke and mirrors for an angry mob. Either is jumping to conclusions at this point. I'm peeked by the articles these last few days as they seem to argue for our solution, we need to hurry up! They're touching on a very progressive meme here, crowd sourcing their next PR move if you will. Some of the problems with this has already been pointed out in earlier posts. Will the forum generate enough relevant conversation? Will enough people care? Will people not caring prove just that or that the presentation sucked? I'd like to see the reasoning behind the legalese. Values, mission etc is nice but not what I'm talking about. What caused this hiccup in the first place? Could it possibly be they want to leverage your data to add value to their polling engine about to hit your newsfeed? What do we know? Well, Facebook has repeatedly put foot-in-mouth in this - Elias from FriendFeed MT Plugin

Was not aware that you had integrated with Facebook Connect :) Re: So what do you think about the new Facebook policies and voting? I don't know how I feel about this to be honest because will we ultimately make a difference. Will they allow us to express how we want the site to move forward or will it just be yes/no and move along nothing to see here?! - Joe Dawson from FriendFeed MT Plugin

While I agree this is clearly a reaction to the outcry about the TOS I don't necessarily believe that it is all smoke and mirrors. The majority of facebook users would not have gone to the extreme of removing all the content from the service because of the wording of the TOS. Most I am sure don't even really know or care what it was all about. They simply want a service they can use to talk and share with their friends. Therefore I believe that this is an attempt by facebook to recognise that their service is more then just another web service. That millions of people rely on them to be honest and sensitive with their content that they are giving to them freely. Hopefully this will lead to better decisions on the part of the facebook management team - Benno from FriendFeed MT Plugin

facebook is begining to see that openness can accelerate their growth. I hope They soon contribute for real with OpenID and data portability issues. - Diego Gomes from FriendFeed MT Plugin