( CNN ) -- Facebook 's flirtation with democracy has come to an end . If it wants to , the social network can now change its policies without user approval . A weeklong open vote on proposed policy changes , including whether to keep public voting and how data is shared with affiliates such as Instagram , closed Monday . If Facebook goes ahead with its plans , this will be the last such public vote . For the results to be binding , more than 30 % of Facebook users had to participate in the vote , which was hosted on the site by a third-party app developer . Facebook says it has more than a billion active users , so that meant at least 300 million members would have needed to vote . But only .2 % of that amount went to the virtual polls . In his blog post announcing the vote last week , Facebook vice president of communications Elliot Schrage said , `` If turnout is less than 30 % , the vote will be advisory . '' Even with a sliver of the required votes , it 's clear what Facebook users who voted are advising Facebook to do . Of the 668,752 members who did participate , 88 % voted to stick with the existing policies . The two documents Facebook wishes to update are its data use policy and its statement of rights and responsibilities . The changes under consideration include updating the language of privacy controls to better explain what it means to hide content from your timeline . Another update would change how Facebook shares user data with companies it owns or partners with , most notably Instagram . The social network also wants to drop the voting system , which it established in 2009 as a response to privacy concerns . `` We will be announcing the results and the next steps regarding the governance process shortly , so check back soon , '' read a post Monday on the official Facebook Site Governance page . Now a third-party auditor will verify the tallies . But unless 299 million virtual votes were somehow misplaced , the results are clear .
An open vote on Facebook policy changes closes after a week . It received only .2 % of 300 million votes needed for results to be binding . Facebook must now decide whether it will go ahead with the updates . Proposed changes include doing away with the voting system , changing how data is shared .