Facebook lets you pre-approve drunken snaps in privacy revamp
Facebook's new privacy controls bring it closer in line with Google+, including greater control of who can see your pics and your profile.
- Shortlisted for British Photography Awards 2022, Commended in Landscape Photographer of the Year 2022
Facebook's new privacy settings, announced last night, will give you finer control over content displayed on your profile and, in particular, who can see your photos.
Previously, any pics your friends tagged you in would be automatically displayed on your profile. We certainly understand the annoyance of waking up at 4pm and having to un-tag all the horrendous photos from the night before that your friends, family and colleagues have been giggling at all day.
Facey-B has now made it so that photos you are tagged in will remain 'pending' until you approve the content and decide to display it on your profile. This goes for statuses and Places tags as well.
If you don't like the photo and believe it will get you fired -- or worse, arrested -- a drop-down menu will allow you to easily request the photo be removed. You can even be a real drama queen and block that user from tagging you in content altogether. The aim is to make the privacy settings much easier to use by taking them away from a hard to reach page and merging it with the content it concerns.
With its new ability to select exactly which users will see your content, Facebook is clearly bringing its privacy settings in line with Google+, whose 'Circles' system already offers a similar system. If you want to double-check who is seeing what, you can now select 'view profile as...' to see exactly what content different people will see on your profile. Handy.
You'll also now be able to tag people in posts and photos who you're not friends with -- in the same way you'd send a tweet to someone who's not following you on Twitter. This applies to fan pages of companies (such as our awesome Facebook page) or bands you have not Liked.
The new changes aim to make your profile much easier to control and make sure you don't accidentally let your HR manager see those photos of you doing a nude clog dance at the office party.
Expect to see the changes rolling out on your profile in the next few weeks. What do you think? A step forward for privacy or too much to manage? Reveal your innermost secrets in the comments section below or on our Facebook page.