Attention, Facebook users, new and veterans: That blue cartoon dinosaur showing up is serious business.
It’s part of Facebook;s latest efforts to convince users to check their privacy settings.
“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,” Facebook said in a blogpost Thursday.
“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.
“First time posters will also see a reminder to choose an audience for their first post, and if they don’t make a choice, it will be set to Friends. People can change who they are posting to at any time, and can also change the privacy of their past posts too.”
No stranger to privacy fiascos, Facebook had already made the tool available to users who were posting public updates. The feature is designed to remind people how widely they share posts, what apps they use and other privacy issues.
Facebook engineering manager Raylene Yung says the tool is the result of user feedback and decisions by the company to improve the user experience. Facebook says users are sometimes worried about sharing something by accident, or sharing with the wrong audience.
“For people already on Facebook, we’ve also received the feedback that they are sometimes worried about sharing something by accident, or sharing with the wrong audience,” Facebook said.
“Over the next few weeks, we’ll start rolling out a new and expanded privacy checkup tool, which will take people through a few steps to review things like who they’re posting to, which apps they use, and the privacy of key pieces of information on their profile.”
The privacy blog can be read online.
