Facebook has just announced that starting Thursday, a major overhaul of the site’s privacy controls will begin rollout to all users. The goal is to help users share exactly what they want with exactly who they want by improving privacy setting transparency, simplicity, and accessibility.
Amongst the many significant changes, privacy settings will soon appear on the profile and news feed publisher in-line with the content rather than on a dedicated privacy settings page. Users will be able to their specific or city-level location to any post, retroactively change the privacy setting of previously published content, and opt to require pre-approval any time they’re tagged in a photo, checkin, or other type of post.
The changes may reduce the volume of content that is unwittingly overshared, and help users protect themselves from being associated with objectionable content against their will. The end result could be an increase in confidence in Facebook privacy that leads users to be comfortable sharing more, which could in turn increase engagement with the site.
Facebook last redesigned its privacy settings in May 2010 following criticism regarding the complexity of the controls.
