Although the could be seen as a win for privacy advocates, Schrems described it as a sham.

Schrems said that in its handling of the vote, Facebook effectively "hid the polling center." The voting, he explained, is not prominently featured on the site. The company also demanded that huge numbers of users comment on its proposed changes in order to trigger a vote, but was then critical of the mass-organizing tactics that Europe v Facebook used to turn out the comments, he said.

Facebook defended its efforts to elicit user feedback.

"To promote the vote, Facebook has served nearly a billion impressions to users, including mobile-only users, and will continue to do so. Once someone votes they can choose to tell their friends they did so in their friends' News Feeds," a representative wrote in an email.

U.S.-based privacy advocate David Jacobs, the consumer protection counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), was also dismissive of the .