Facebook began rolling out new privacy controls Wednesday morning while also taking away your option to hide from its search engine.
Facebook is rolling out new privacy controls Wednesday morning, while also taking away the option for you to hide from Facebook search.
The new privacy tools will make it easier for you to pick which of your friends or subscribers can view your personal info, status updates and photos, according to Reuters. It also makes it simpler for you to request that a photograph of yourself be taken down by the uploader.
Facebook is also making changes to your Activity Log, which will make it easier to see where your personal data is traveling across Facebook's Open Graph. Another change: apps must separately ask for permission to tap into your personal information and to post status updates for you. Both actions were previously handled with a single request.
Along with the privacy changes comes the major change to search -- you'll no longer have the option to hide from other Facebook users looking for your name, according to the New York Times. That's likely a move towards becoming a power player in online search -- it's not hard to imagine Facebook as a modern Yellow Pages replacement.
You'll know you have the new privacy features when a privacy shortcut appears in the top-right corner of your Facebook window. Mashable has reached out to Facebook to learn more about the privacy changes, and we will update this post with any response.
The changes come in the wake of a vote in which users, who were overwhelmingly apathetic about the vote, lost the ability to decide the direction of future company policy -- privacy issues included.
Josh Leichtung's insight:
The new privacy changes are eating away at the value Facebook had when we signed up.