to our previous Terms of Use as we worked on a new set of governing
documents that would more clearly explain the relationship between
Facebook and its users. Since then, I've been excited to see how much
people care about Facebook and how willing they are to contribute to
the process of governing the site.
Our main goal at Facebook is to help make the world more open and
transparent. We believe that if we want to lead the world in this
direction, then we must set an example by running our service in this
way.
We sat down to work on documents that could be the foundation of this
and we came to an interesting realization—that the conventional
business practices around a Terms of Use document are just too
restrictive to achieve these goals. We decided we needed to do things
differently and so we're going to develop new policies that will govern
our system from the ground up in an open and transparent way.
Beginning today, we are giving you a greater opportunity to voice your
opinion over how Facebook is governed. We're starting this off by
publishing two new documents for your review and comment. The first is
the Facebook Principles, which defines your rights and will serve as
the guiding framework behind any policy we'll consider—or the reason we
won't consider others. The second document is the Statement of Rights
and Responsibilities, which will replace the existing Terms of Use.
With both documents, we tried hard to simplify the language so you have
a clear understanding of how Facebook will be run. We've created
separate groups for each document so you can read them and provide
comments and feedback. You can find the Facebook Principles here and the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities here. Before these new proposals go into effect, you'll also have the ability to vote for or against proposed changes.