Facebook rolled out a new way for users to read and understand its privacy policy. Although none of the terms of the privacy policy have changed, the new site and policy outlines has been rewritten, reformatted and reorganized in a way that makes it easy for non-lawyers to understand.

This trial format comes a day after Facebook responded to a report from the the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. In its response, Facebook said that it agreed with the FTC's finding "that any privacy framework must be implemented in a way that both honors consumers' expectations in the contexts in which they use online services and promotes the innovation that has fueled the growth of the Internet of the past two decades."

Facebook explained the rationale behind the new human-friendly draft of its privacy on the Site Governance page, stating it had settled upon a few basic principles when trying to figure out what users want from a privacy policy.

These principles are:

First, it should be easy to understand, even when the concept is complicated or is of no use to anyone. Second, it should be visual and interactive, because that's the way people use the web today. Third, it should focus on the questions Facebook users are most likely to ask, because that makes it relevant.

Looking at the draft policy and at Facebook's official privacy policy, we know which one we prefer.







It's really amazing what kind of difference larger fonts and well organized information can have on the readability of a document.

Make no mistake: Even in this early draft, the Facebook's privacy policy is still a dense document. That said, information is much more understandable and the navigational aspects are a huge improvement.

Frankly, our hats are off to Facebook for putting this type of document together. We wish other companies (read: Google) would be so willing to better present this type of information.