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Facebook Privacy Default Now ‘Friends’ for New Users, the Rest of Us Get the Privacy Dinosaur

Facebook has just announced a small change to new user privacy and an new initiative for old user privacy that at its core, wants to make sure that people are sharing everything with the correct audie...
Facebook Privacy Default Now ‘Friends’ for New Users, the Rest of Us Get the Privacy Dinosaur
Written by Josh Wolford
  • Facebook has just announced a small change to new user privacy and an new initiative for old user privacy that at its core, wants to make sure that people are sharing everything with the correct audience. You know, like only telling your friends that you’ll be out of town all weekend, not the general public.

    If you are 18 years old or older, the default privacy of your first post after joining Facebook has been set to ‘Public’ (for teens it’s ‘Friends’ by default but with a ‘Public option). Today, that changes. Facebook is doing the right thing and switching the default post setting for new users to just ‘Friends’.

    “On Facebook you can share whatever you want with whomever you want, from a one-to-one conversation, to friends or to everyone. While some people want to post to everyone, others have told us that they are more comfortable sharing with a smaller group, like just their friends. We recognize that it is much worse for someone to accidentally share with everyone when they actually meant to share just with friends, compared with the reverse. So, going forward, when new people join Facebook, the default audience of their first post will be set to Friends. Previously, for most people, it was set to Public,” says the company in a release.

    Facebook: “oversharing is worse than undersharing.” Quick, print that on a t-shirt!

    Of course, old Facebook users need a crash course in oversharing as well. To this end, Facebook will be launching an updated and expanded version of the privacy checkup tool, otherwise known as the Privacy Dinosaur which appeared on the site in late March.

    The privacy dino jumps in and asks people to confirm their posting audience. “Sorry to interrupt. You haven’t changed who can see your posts lately, so we just wanted to make sure you’re sharing this post with the right audience. (Your current setting is _______, though you can change this whenever you post)” it says.

    Now, Facebook is introducing what looks like a quick privacy tutorial (seen above) that teaches all users about sharing settings. Honestly, who couldn’t use a refresher on privacy settings? Imagine all the relationships, careers, and families that could be saved by people knowing who’s hearing the crap they’re saying on Facebook.

    At least it’ll be nice to know who you’re sharing with when Facebook decides to eavesdrop on you.

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