People love to complain. That’s been undeniably evident since the dawn of… Facebook. Well, earlier, I guess, but on Facebook, you get to see it all. Complaints about pets, smells, bodily functions, partners, exes, work and bosses, and well, pretty much anything. But what people seem to be the most pissed off about is every time Facebook, itself, changes.
To be fair, Facebook is always re-jigging things; and not always for the better. You probably know that since August 25, Facebook’s changed again. The difference is that they seem, for once, to be changes that will actually benefit users and/or make things more streamlined. Also, the changes will be gradual.
At first, just 1 percent of 750 000 000 users will be affected (that’s still a sh*tload), so if your FB is looking odd – consider yourself one of the lucky, chosen ones.
Here are some of the biggest changes:
Change #1: See What Your Profile Looks Like To Others
This is really awesome. A new option, on your main page, will offer you a choice to “view profile as… any of your friends” so if you’ve censored a few things, you can check to see if it’s worked.
Change # 2: Edit Who Sees What You Post, and When
You can now edit your profile and privacy settings in the same place. Say you want to edit “hobbies”. Click Hobbies. To the right, there is now an icon (for different audiences – friends, family, work etc) and labels to help make it easier to decide who you’re sharing with.
You’ll also get to control who gets to see older posts; so if you’ve had a falling out with someone, you can take back things they once could see. It’s petty, but it’s Facebook.
Change #3: Do More When You Detag
I used to hate when friends would post the most unflattering God-awful pics of me and then tag me in it, alerting everyone in my newsfeed. Urgh. I would then go and untag myself, not realising that nothing really happens except that the pic would no longer be linked to my profile, but it would still be visible to everyone. Now, a window will pop up, explaining what’s about to happen, now that you’ve chosen to remove the tag, and offering you some additional action – specifically, a user can choose to remove the tag, ask the person who uploaded the photo to remove it, or block the user who uploaded the photo.
Change #4: Tag People You’re Not Friends With, Pages You Don’t Like
Before, only friends could tag a pic of you, but now Facebook is allowing you to tag people you’re not friends with, or pages you haven’t “liked”. That doesn’t seem to help with privacy at all – but if you are tagged by a stranger (haha) then you get to at least prove the tagging first.
As I mentioned, Facebook will implement the changes slowly – I guess it’s their way of working out the kinks, and/or keeping up with Google+ – but soon, no one will be spared… - Sunday Tribune