Europe-vs-Facebook group gathers comments in privacy battle

The campaign Europe-vs-Facebook, run by an Austrian law student, said Thursday it had gathered the 7,000 comments required for the social networking website to review its privacy policy.

The announcement came as Facebook announced a price of $38 per share for its record-setting initial public offering, which would give the leading social network a giant market value of $104 billion (83 billion euros).

Facebook on May 11 published changes to its privacy policy, after Austrian law student Max Schrems and others had complained to the data commissioner in Ireland where Facebook has its overseas headquarters.

Schrems however criticised the changes, saying they presented "one step forward, two steps back" -- with users losing their legal rights over their online data and personal profiles.

The advocacy group has proposed changes at www.our-policy.org and invited users to comment -- aiming for more than 7,000 comments, Facebook's threshold within seven days to put the proposed changes up for a vote.

"We made it: More than 7,000 comments for our-policy.org," the group said on its website www.europe-v-facebook.org, saying that far more comments had been submitted in languages other than English.

It said the number of comments "means that according to Facebook's policy they are unable to make the proposed changes. We are now waiting for the first reaction by Facebook!"

(c) 2012 AFP