Facebook Introduces ‘Petition’ Feature In America

Facebook Introduces ‘Petition’ Feature

Over the last few years, social media has provided groups with an excellent opportunity to rally together to promote causes or events. This has allowed many people the opportunity not only to meet like-minded people but also to actively organise and bring attention to planned public events.

In a report via The Verge, however, it seems that Facebook has decided to bring something new to this. Namely, the introduction of a petition-like feature. One which will allow, in part, local officials to be contactable with suggestions. These can then be boosted by popularity from the community. This already sounds like a bad idea!

Civil Discourse

The service, which is currently only available in America, was rolled out over the weekend, but there are already a number of concerns surrounding it. Not specifically because of its intention (because that seems perfectly valid) but because of the vast likelihood that such a system is surely going to be open to a lot of abuse and ‘trolling’.

It’s for reasons such as this that Facebook decided to cancel their planned ‘civil discourse’ feature. A design that would’ve undoubtedly been a very bad idea!

Selected Users

While the feature has now been launched, there is something of a caveat. At the time of writing Facebook has confirmed that the service has only initially been provided to ‘certain’ people. Exactly who these are is unclear. What is, clear, however, is that if you were to go on and try and find it, the chances are you may not be able to. At least, not right now.

At this point, one might consider this in ‘beta’ testing. I can not, however, suspect that sooner or later, Facebook is going to quietly remove this feature. Why? Well simply consider the nature of some of the internets inhabitants. It’s just doomed to failure.

What do you think? Is this a good or bad idea? Would you use this to contact your local officials with suggestions? – Let us know in the comments!