- Image by Getty Images via @daylife
It appears that the world’s most popular social-networking site, Facebook, has finally bowed to pressure concerning its privacy settings. Facebook has announced that starting from 26 May 2010, a new set of privacy settings will be gradually unveiled in a bid to make control a lot easier for users. This follows feedback and criticism from some profile owners that Facebook privacy settings are usually over-crowded and too difficult to understand with over 50 different settings and 170 options.
The new settings will aim to provide; a single control for content, more powerful controls for basic information and an easy control to turn off all applications. Therefore, users will be able to set who (friends only, friends of friends or everyone) can see the content of their post in a couple of clicks. In addition, your list of friends will no longer be available to everyone by default – users can now control who can see their friends and pages. Finally, users can also control whether applications and websites can access any of their information including applications and games. While these partners can still see information set to “everyone”, this feature can also be completely turned off.
Meanwhile the profile picture, name, networks and gender will remain publicly available by default so as to make it easy for users to find each other. The changes will be rolled out over the next few weeks and you can take a look at the new privacy page here, which explains in detail how the new settings will work.
Talking Point
If you were in a position to make changes on behalf of Facebook, what would be your ideal privacy settings?